


It's Not Love

by stilinskitrash



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Feelings, First Time, Nightmares, One Night Stands, Oral Sex, References to Depression, Rehabilitation, Sexual Inexperience, Smut, Time Skips, they're both a little fucked up and in need of some love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2020-05-13 02:11:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19241713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilinskitrash/pseuds/stilinskitrash
Summary: Allie chews her lower lip, “yeah, no. This isn’t— this isn’t a thing.” she clarifies, gesturing between them. “That was… good. Really good. But I think we both got what we needed.”She watches Harry’s jaw clench, his emotions shutting off again. It hurts more than she expects to see him react like that, and she can feel the bridge they’d begun to build between themselves evaporating again. But what did she expect? She knows that she doesn’t get to sleep with Harry and be his friend.





	1. Chapter 1

The first time Allie sleeps with Harry, she knows it won’t fill the gaping hole inside her that she’s desperately trying to ignore. If anything, she expects it’ll make her feel worse. And it doesn’t particularly help that she’s never had sex before. 

She isn’t sure who initiated it; Harry kissed her first, but Allie was the one who suggested they go inside, speaking in not so discreet euphemisms. She can’t deny that his hands feel fucking fantastic skirting up and down her body, his mouth kissing the length of her neck as they stumble up the stairs to his bedroom. They should be able to keep their hands off each other for the mere minutes it takes to get to Harry’s bed, but Allie’s hungry and desperate for the distraction he’s offering.

Harry’s hands are delicate, but the way he touches her is all but that. He has the hands of someone who’s never worked a day in their life, and probably never would have had to, if not for their current situation. She expects that’ll change soon enough — it’s already started to. 

Tugging apart the buttons of his shirt, she exposes his chest and latches back onto his lips. He tastes of whiskey and cigarettes. They hardly say anything. She tells herself that this has nothing to do with Harry himself; it’s all just circumstantial. But he smiles at her in a way he never has before as she undoes his belt, both of them swaying a little. It tugs at something in her gut. 

Of  _ course _ Harry’s hot; he’s a rich and conventionally attractive and she’d never tell you otherwise. But all of that has nothing to do with his character, which, much like Cassandra, she’s never found wildly tolerable. 

As soon as Allie loses her own shirt, he guides her towards the bed and lays her down. He kisses a trail down her chest, sucking and gently biting at her skin, but only in places she can cover up tomorrow. He’s being smart, and is clearly sober enough to be aware of the possible ramifications of them sleeping together. His fingers hook underneath the straps of her black bra, which is by far her least hot piece of lingerie, and is about to slip it off when she clamps a hand down over his.

She’d like to keep it on. He hardly flinches but gets the message, instead moving on and further down her body to slip her trousers down her legs. They’re both in their underwear now and Allie almost laughs. Two weeks ago, this whole situation might’ve cropped up in a dirty fantasy. It feels far detached from any semblance of the reality she was familiar with, but it’s a part of their new one.

She feels herself becoming more desperate for his touch, but she’s not sure how this all goes down from here. Allie’s smart enough to know that the sex they show on TV is nothing like actual sex. Pulling Harry back to her mouth, their lips slant across each other. One of his hands palms her breast over the fabric of her bra, the other cups the side of her face. 

“Do you— do you have a…?” the words hangs in their air, and she feels a breathy laugh against her ear as he pulls away.

Harry climbs off of her and walks to his bedside drawer to retrieve a condom. With only one lamp on in the room, he’s cast in a dark shadow, but she notices the hard imprint of his dick against his boxers. It makes her feel a little red, heat rushing to her cheeks, but there’s enough alcohol in her system to give her liquid confidence.

“Under or over?” he asks, standing beside the bed where she suddenly feels overexposed without his weight above her. 

She pauses awkwardly, “uh, whatever. Under.”

He nods and Allie’s suddenly unsure about whether she should watch him roll the condom on or not. Should she look away? Should she help? Before she can snap out of her split second panic, he’s already got it on, and is applying what must be lube to his hardened length. She wriggles off the duvet so he can pull it back. 

His mouth descends back on her, his kisses harder and wanting. She mirrors him, relishing in how good she feels when his hands grip her waist tightly and their heat’s press flush against each other, teasing.

Pushing himself up, Harry hovers just above her. “You’re okay still?” he asks.

Allie feverently nods, scratching her nails gently up and down his back. She just can’t admit that she’s nervous, not when she so desperately just wants to be swallowed up in what she hopes is a euphoric distraction right now.

Even with her expectations, it’s fucking painful when he slides into her. He takes it as slow as he can, but the intensity of it has her grimacing and hissing in discomfort. She’s surprised when he kisses her, because it’s far gentler than before, and it works as a distraction until he’s gone as far as he can. 

“Hey, Allie,” his voice is low, and he’s looking for something in her eyes.

“It’s fine,” as he establishes a rhythm, the pain starts to lessen, her muscles and body adjusting to his size. A strange feeling pools in the pit of her stomach.

The noise of the party outside is just the background noise behind their sighs, and Allie finds Harry to be particularly audible in showing his pleasure. He’s  _ loud _ , moaning against her lips, whispering curses and her name nonsensically, and she’s glad no one else is in the house nearby. Harry seems to be having a far better time than she is. It’s not exactly like it’s  _ bad _ for her. It’s just not what she imagined feeling. 

His movements get faster and harder, and Allie grips tightly onto his shoulder blades. He gasps against her lips, his whole body shuddering. 

“I— I—“ he stammers, lips brushing Allie’s cheek.

There’s a sudden convulsing feeling inside her, and Harry collapses in on himself atop her in a series of moans. 

_ He’s done _ , she realises, dumbfounded. 

There’s a moment of pause where he catches his breath, his naked body limp above her. Then he rolls off, discards the condom, and flops back down beside her breathlessly. 

He stares up at the ceiling with a wide grin. Allie can’t quite process it all. It felt like her body was building towards something, and it never reached it. She’d felt an intense heat, a deep wanting, and she’d never found a proper release for it. And shouldn’t she have? Wasn’t that a part of sex?

“That was it?” she says it in her head but speaks it out loud, by accident.

Harry hardly reacts; he’s still bathing in the afterglow of the climax  _ he  _ had clearly reached. 

“Yeah, that was… that was so great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tagged as underage because I assume allie is 16/17 and harry is 17/18. but i could be wrong. im assuming this bc harry and cassandra must be in the same year, and as allie is younger i assume she's the year below? this could all be wrong tho and if it is then it's just my headcanon lol.  
> hoping to update often!! probably more frequently if im satisfied with stuff, or less often if i have writers block, but i already have a few chapters done. will most likely span from the start of s1 up until the end, but mostly be about that 6 month time jump. but lets see !!!!!  
> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aNotHeR uPdAte shocking news!! this is twice the length of the last chap but i couldnt find a good point to split it into two chaps so have a Big Boi chapter xo mwah

There’s blood on her hands. 

It’s there, every night in her dreams. She sees Dewey’s blood, Cassandra’s blood, and her own blood. It’s red and sticky and immovable. She’s drowning in it.

Allie hardly sleeps now. Most nights she stays awake, sorting out jobs and roles and rotas, and talking to Will or Grizz or Gordie about the future. Anything that distracts her for even a few moments from what they’d done — what  _ she’d done _ — was relief. 

It was a month after the night Harry came to her house, apologising for what had led to the death of her sister. Even then, she hadn’t found it in herself to really blame him. He hadn’t pulled the trigger; he hadn’t killed Cassandra. But that didn’t excuse what he’d done. She’d been naive enough to not expect such disgusting locker room talk from the boys she’d gone to school with, who’d sat in her and her sisters classes and walked past them in the halls. 

But if she never forgave him, it’d eat her up. If she never moved on, she’d die bitter and angry and exactly how Cassandra wouldn’t have wanted her to be. She reasoned that with Dewey, if that was what he’d been capable of, it was just a matter of sooner or later. There would’ve been another victim of his misplaced anger, his violent misogyny. It was the cruel hand of fate that he had just happened to enact his insanity on her sister.

Allie could tell that her friends still despised Harry. They couldn’t understand why she wasn’t furious whenever she him around New Ham, why Allie didn’t want to slam her fist into his face or spit on him. Will clearly wanted to, as did Gordie. But Cassandra was  _ her _ sister. It was  _ her _ anger and grief to carry, to express how she wanted.

“Uno,” grins Bean, holding up a single card after she placed her penultimate one in the middle. 

They all sat cross legged in a circle on Allie’s living room floor, playing pretend that everything was fine. That was all they did now, really. Play pretend.

“Not on my watch, sorry,” Grizz slaps down a reverse card, and everyone laughs as Bean pouts. Everything almost feels normal. Things were perhaps the  _ most _ normal they had been in a while. Will, Gordie, Sam, Becca, Kelly, Gordie, Bean and herself, just hanging out on a Friday night. Normal.

Allie’s phone suddenly lights up beside her, and she does a double take after reading the name  _ Harry Bingham _ on her screen.

“Allie, yo, it’s your turn.” Will prompts, nudging her gently.

“Oh, sorry,” she places down a card absently, still staring at her phone screen.

**_Harry Bingham:_ ** _ I keep having nightmares. _

She’s not got a clue why he’s texted her, especially not about something like that. Allie hardly thought of herself as his first port of call for personal issues. Surely he’d text Kelly before he’d text her, or a handful of other people. Allie looks up at Kelly, who’s sat across from her, and is looking at Will with a smile and soft eyes. Apparently Harry  _ hasn’t  _ texted her, or if he has, she hasn’t noticed.

Just as the game returns to Allie and she’s supposed to play another card, her phone vibrates from another text.

**_Harry Bingham:_ ** _ sorry, ignore that. _

Something about it makes her uneasy. 

“Has something happened?” Will asks, noticing her distraction. The group are suddenly all staring at her, her next card unplayed in her hand. Ever since Cassandra and Dewey, she’s felt like everyone treads carefully around her, like she’ll break if they say or do the wrong thing. It’s like being under a very cautious microscope.

“Yeah, I—” she’s not sure how she already got on her feet. “I’ve gotta check on something, sorry.” 

“You need me to come?” Grizz offers, standing up.

Allie shakes her head and shrugs on her jacket. “No, no, it’s all good. I’ll be back soon.”

It’s not a far walk to Harry’s house. Prior to everyone disappearing, Allie hadn’t been to his house since she was little and you’d invite absolutely everyone you knew to your birthday parties. Now he shares his house with a handful of others, and the inside is beyond any recognition of it that she might’ve retained. Mickey lets her in, and she already knows the way up to his room.

When she knocks, he doesn’t answer. Allie raps her fist against the wood harder, “Harry, it’s me.”

She chews her lip, listening for any movement, but hears silence. Before her mind can spiral into thinking the worst, the door is pulled open from his side.

He looks exhausted. The bags under his eyes and the unshaven stubble on his jaw give it all away. The prim and cleaned up boy he was mere months ago has crumbled, and even the way he carries himself seems to have shifted. Harry rubs his eyes as he stares at her blankly, then drags a hand through his messy, unbrushed hair.

“Allie,” he frowns, as if he hadn’t expected her. Should he have? Did he mean to text someone else? “What’s up?”

“I got your text.” she says flatly, worrying that this was all a mistake.

His face hardens. 

“Is everything okay?” she prompts.

Behind him, Allie can see the state of disrepair his room has fallen into since the last time she was there. Clothes lie on the floor, the washing basket overflowing. There’s unwashed plates and mugs on his windowsill and his duvet and sheets are crumpled up. 

“If you got my text, then you’d know that I asked you to ignore it,” is all he says.

Allie feels a wave of emotion overcome her. She shoves his chest backwards, catching him off guard quickly enough that she can step into the room and close the door behind them. “Cut the bullshit, Harry. Why’d you text me?”

In a matter of minutes, she’s watched his face contort from exhaustion to apprehension and now to defeat. His features soften, his shoulders sagging as he backs up against the bed.

“It was stupid.” his voice is smaller than she’s ever heard it. It seems like he’s finding it hard to really look at her.

She sighs, “I’m not mad. I just wanted to, you know, check up on you…”

The implication that she might  _ care  _ about him hangs between them for too long, heavy on a thin string that could be easily cut from either end. Harry trains his eyes on the floor before collapsing against the foot of his bed. His foot knocks an empty bottle of wine out from under the bed, but he ignores it. As the bottle rolls, so does Allie’s stomach.

“They’re just bad dreams,” he mutters, “about what I’ve done, but worse. What I could’ve done, what I thought about, what I shouldn’t have done. It’s fucking plaguing me, every waking minute and every moment I close my eyes. It hurts so much but I know it shouldn’t because at least I’m fucking  _ alive _ .”

Allie feels knocked back by his vulnerable honesty. The vindictive part of her thinks  _ good, you’re suffering for what you did, _ but is largely overwhelmed by the part of her that wants to move closer to him. She’s sitting with guilt, too. Sleepless nights are something she’s used to, and intrusive thoughts are a daily occurence. Sitting on her knees in front of him, she reaches out and places a hand lightly over his. He doesn’t look at her, and she feels him flinch a little at the contact. But, he doesn’t pull away.

“I have nightmares, too.” she admits. “One of them is about what it was like for her — for Cassandra — the moment it happened. I imagine I’m there, close enough to see but too far to help. I watch her fall, I watch her blood stain the pavement. In the worst ones, I pull the trigger.”

They’re not dreams she’s spoken about aloud before, not even to Will. She’d worried that he’d think she was losing it, that the guilt and grief was becoming too much and he’d just worry all the time. But the dreams had been coming for weeks, worse with every sleep. 

Harry’s palm turns over, and he interlaces his fingers with hers. It’s a daringly soft move.

“I don’t even know why you’d want to see me,” he says candidly, staring at their hands.

“Me neither.” she says it without malice, just plain honesty.

He smiles a little. It’s just a tug at the corners of his mouth, so small she almost misses it.

“Are we fucked up?” 

Allie nods her head, “oh, definitely.” 

“I shouldn’t have texted you. I knew you’d be the last person who’d want to hear about my problems. But I kind of panicked,” he squeezes her hand, “thank you.” 

Allie feels a little flush. The distance between them isn’t much now, and it’s easy for her to close. She presses her lips to his with some hesitancy. They’re not drunk anymore, but they’re still looking for solace and a warm body. She’s thinking about how unhealthy this probably all is in the long run just as he lifts her up onto his lap, deepening the kiss.

His hands palm her ass, driving her closer into him. Harry unzips her jacket and tosses it aside, quickly pulling off his own shirt. It feels very different than last time but it doesn’t feel wrong. There’s an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. It’s as if the first time the lights were off, but now they’re in full brightness, as clear as day. His hair’s a little longer and there’s more of it for her to grab onto, so she tugs his lips roughly towards her mouth.

They make their way onto the bed whilst still attached. She has to kick off a comic book and some other rubbish so he can pin her against the mattress, one of his hands skirting the length of her torso, down to her pants. Slipping beneath the fabric of her jeans, his fingers find her underwear and the growing wetness there.

She struggles to focus on Harry’s eager, hungry kisses  _ and  _ his wandering fingers at the same time, as it all combines into one blissful feeling. He dips two fingers into her, curling them and beginning a rhythm that feels  _ fantastic _ . Allie’s hips buck against his hand, but he keeps her pressed down and in place.

He laughs against the crook of her neck, “you’re so wet, Jesus.”

She knows that’s a good thing; it certainly  _ feels  _ good. Why did they skip this part the first time? She feels a low heat inside her build and intensify. Harry adds another finger and has his thumb stroking another intense spot in slow circles.

“Harry, fuck,” she finds herself saying, gripping onto him as she feels the wave building inside her be finally let loose. His name sounds nice on her lips like this, and the way he kisses her harder makes her think he likes it too. 

The heat continues to build. Allie wriggles against his touch, eager for release but also eager for more. She feels like she’s wearing far too many clothes as her body gets hotter. Then, when she comes, it’s like fireworks; it’s explosive and warm and amazing and she’s suddenly on cloud nine. It’s the climax she’d been waiting for, and an addictive sensation.

Allie stares dumbfoundedly at him as he sucks his fingers between his lips like it’s nothing, like he didn’t just have them inside her. He kisses her next, and the idea of it all is so confusingly arousing. 

“That was good, right?” he asks, quirking a brow, because he’s suddenly  _ so _ sure of himself. Maybe some things really never change.

“I suppose,” she teases, compliantly bending her neck as he sucks bruises at the curve of it. 

“You  _ suppose? _ ” he backs up and frowns, and she can’t tell if he’s mock offensive or if he’s  _ really _ offended. “Guess I’ll have to do better.”

Harry slips away out of her grasp before she can say anything, but only so he’s further down her body. Disposing of her jeans, he plants long kisses down her bare abdomen until he’s in between her thighs, and he has his tongue on her.

Later she comes once more, unravelling under his touch, hoping the high she’s experiencing lasts forever. As Allie starfishes on Harry’s bed in the afterglow, he rushes to grab a condom.

“Wait, hey, do you not want something in return?” Allie frowns; she’d always presumed that a little giving didn’t come without a little receiving in reply during sex.

Harry shrugs, “I just want you, right now.”

This time around, the sex is a hundred times more enjoyable, presumably on both ends. Allie figures now where to stimulate herself to feel best, and even though she’s still painfully tight, the weight of him keeps her grounded. They eventually collapse in a mess of naked, sweaty limbs and heavy panting. Allie wonders how achy she’ll be in the morning. 

The alarm on Harry’s bedside drawer tells her she’s not only out past curfew, but she’s spent longer at Harry’s than she’d intended. A quick check of her phone reveals a series of texts from both Will and Gordie, demanding her whereabouts.

“Shit,” she groans, hauling herself off the bed and attempting to locate her clothes amongst the mass of Harry’s discarded shit.

“You okay?” Harry props himself up on his elbows. His hair is a mess — thanks to her — but he looks hot post-sex, all red and soft, a little bleary eyed.

“Gotta go,” is all she tells him. The longer she stays here, whilst they’re not fucking or sharing strange heart-to-heart’s, the weirder Allie feels about it all. She should  _ not  _ make this a regular occurrence. 

“Hey, wait,” Harry nearly falls over himself trying to put his boxers back on, “you don’t have to go. You can stay.”

Allie chews her lower lip, “yeah, no. This isn’t— this isn’t a  _ thing _ .” she clarifies, gesturing between them. “That was… good. Really good. But I think we both got what we needed.”

She watches Harry’s jaw clench, his emotions shutting off again. It hurts more than she expects to see him react like that, and she can feel the bridge they’d begun to build between themselves evaporating again. But what did she expect? She knows that she doesn’t get to sleep with Harry and be his friend.

“Right. Sure.” the bluntness in his voice is enough to tell her he’s hurt. He turns away from her and climbs back into bed, leaving her to show herself out the way she came in; alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me writing this chapter: ouch

No one has parties anymore. The novelty of a parent-free environment wears off very quickly, and fears of rationing and safety replace it. Also, no one ever feels like partying, not with so much at stake everyday. If they’d imagined a parent-less town before the parents actually disappeared, most of them would’ve probably spoken about having parties every night. 

Three months on from day zero, the guard approaches Allie with a proposition.

“A town party? Really?” she nurses a mug of mint tea between her palms, sat at her own kitchen’s island counter. 

Jason shrugs, like it’s obvious, “yeah, why not? Look, it’s September now. Around this time in the old world, some of us would’ve been off to college. There would’ve been leaving parties and celebrations for the last days of our high school lives. Everyone needs a little fun.” 

“Some of us want to get drunk,” Clark clarifies candidly, stepping in, “and to forget about all this shit.”

Allie watches the tea bag float around her mug. “We’ve all had enough time to wallow in self pity. This is our reality and there’s no escaping it. Distractions don’t help, guys, we need to get used to how life is now.”

“People are tired, Allie. They’re losing motivation,” Luke offers, taking a seat on a stool opposite her. “Everyone needs to let loose every once in a while, right? There’s less harm in letting people go crazy in a controlled way than there is in watching the strings snap in another month or so.”

She hasn’t really thought about college, like Jason mentioned. Allie had another year of school left, but Cassandra was supposed to be graduating. A lot of them were. There was a whole life they’d expected to have that had been snatched away from them. Even if they got back to their families, they hadn’t stopped aging. Each day they got older, and they lost the days of their youth they’d planned to spend on campuses, or travelling, or working to save money for cars and houses and a  _ future _ . Time was slipping away from them. Even if they returned to their parents, nothing would ever return to how it was.

“We could have it at the church,” beside her, Will pipes up. “It’s not a bad idea, Allie. Especially not if we actually have some control over it. We can at least try and limit the amount of alcohol and rowdiness. Prom was—” he stops himself mid sentence, but she knows where he was headed.

He would’ve been right to say it, though. Prom  _ had  _ been fun for most people. It was what happened after prom that had tainted the whole event.

Allie mulls on it all for a moment. If she says no, they’d probably do it anyway. She’d receive a text about some wild house party at 2AM, and someone would get hurt or something else bad would happen. She needs to stay a step ahead to keep control and maintain some semblance of order.

“We’d need some people to stay sober, to make sure no one gets hurt.”

“I’m fine with that,” Luke nods, offering himself up as a volunteer. “I can find a few other people who’d be willing to not drink. I’m sure Helena would be onboard.”

Jason grins, “well, there you go.”

Allie’s eyes roll. “And  _ everyone’s  _ invited. This isn’t an exclusive event,” she orders.

“Even Campbell?” Will has his eyebrows raised at her, and Allie wishes things were less complicated. It’s hard to organise anything with safety in mind when there’s a psychopath running freely around town.

“Yes.” she nods tersely. Any other answer would complicate issues further. If she could, Allie would just love to lock Campbell up and throw away the key. Everything would be much easier without him skulking around. 

She agrees to the town party. Word spreads around fast, and it seems like it’s going to be very popular. Allie’s instantly nervous; the last time they had anything like this, someone died. Her sister died. She really doesn’t think she can handle anymore blood on her hands.

But on the day of the town party, Allie feels unexpectedly excited. There’s something comforting in the normality of choosing an outfit for a party, of spending time doing her hair and her makeup when she hasn’t bothered with most of that for months. It’s when she’s chosen an outfit, and she remembers a necklace Cassandra had that would go with it  _ perfectly, _ that her stomach hollows out and a numbness returns to her. She pushes it down with a shot of vodka.

Will and Allie turn up to the church around 11PM, and the party’s in full swing. She could hear it all the way from her house, but the fact that there’s no other noise around town is probably the cause of that. No cars, no traffic, no helicopters, just silence on the road and in the sky.

Everyone seems happy. It’s almost a mirror of that first day, when they threw a rager and Allie kissed Will. That feels like a lifetime ago now. Especially the part about Will; she loves him — she isn’t sure she knows how to stop loving him. She loves him deeply as a friend anyway, that’s for sure, and she knows he loves her. But she’s not holding out hope that he’ll run into her arms anytime soon. Allie can’t risk losing him with childish crushes, not when she needs close friends she can trust. 

The music thuds loudly, a perk of not having any neighbours to write noise complaints. She knows that she should’ve volunteered to stay sober, so she could set an example and stay in charge, but Will convinces her to have a night off and offers to be sober in her place.

Helena’s extensive Jay-Z collection is put to good use. Allie dances and drinks and dances some more, avoiding conversation where she can. These people are her friends but they’re also the ones she’s suddenly supposed to be in charge of. It sets them apart, and it feels isolating. Allie never asked for leadership, all she’d asked for was a seat at the table. In the heat of the music, she trips over her own feet, falling back against someone.

“Hey, watch it,” he slurs, and Allie finds herself in Harry’s arms. She flinches away like she’s been burned. They haven’t spoken more than five civil words to each other in a while, not since the last time they had sex. Even then they hardly spoke.

“Allie,” his face softens unexpectedly and his body goes back to swaying to the music. He’s holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s that’s already half empty. 

“Don’t talk,” she demands, continuing to dance as the song changes. Harry looks practically dishevelled — and she tells herself it’s the alcohol — but it’s hot. “Dance with me.”

She moves closer to him, and notices his breath hitch. No one else exists, she tells herself. For one night she can pretend the town doesn’t rely on her decisions, right? She can pretend she’s still just a teenager, she has finals and essays and proms and boy drama. 

Well, she still sort of has boy drama. Allie can pretend there’s no one else in the room, but Harry seems to believe it. He’s pressing into to her now, slurring the words to the song playing. One of his hands skirts her waist but they’re caught in a stalemate. Neither of them have expressed any desire to be public about their affairs, and even though his lips look incredibly inviting she can’t bring herself to latch onto them here.

“Outside?” she speaks loudly over the music into his ear, but hopefully quiet enough that only he hears.

Harry nods and turns on his heels. The early Autumn weather is chilly and wet, and Allie wishes she hadn’t left her jacket somewhere inside. But just as she thinks about being warmer, she is. Another body is around her, warm lips slanting drunkenly over her own, hands tight on her waist. Allie lets herself melt into it for a moment before snapping herself back to reality.

“Harry, stop,” she mutters, pushing him back. Her hand stays rooted on his chest, fist scrunched up in his shirt. “What are we doing?”

He shifts on his feet and shakes his head. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“No, like, what are we  _ doing?  _ Why do we keep doing this?”

Harry’s jaw clenches. He pulls out of her reach, and Allie’s fingers grasp at air. She’s full of conflict. The desire for the warmth and familiarity of Harry fights against the sensibility in her that says he’s bad news.

“Let’s not do this.” he sighs.

“I just don’t get it, Harry. We aren’t solving any of our problems by hooking up.”

Harry scoffs. “Why do we need to? Not everything is a means to an end, you know. Some people do stuff for  _ fun. _ ”

She raises a brow at him, “so I’m just some ‘ _ fun _ ’?”

“Fuck, Allie.” Harry laughs, exasperated, and drags his hand through his hair.

He’s pacing restlessly, and the alcohol coursing through her body has her head spinning. She digs her nails into her palm to keep herself balanced and awake. She feels like she’s losing the battle between giving in and curling into Harry’s warmth, and challenging him on his motives. It’s not fair though, really, considering she doesn’t even know her own. She doesn’t know why she finds such comfort in Harry Bingham, and why she doesn’t feel worse about it.

“You’re not  _ just _ anything. You’re Allie fucking Pressman, and you’ve been keeping this town running, albeit mine and other people’s complaints. Like, Jesus Christ. You’re… you’re amazing, and hot, and funny, and…”

Allie feels her chest tighten uncomfortably. Words like these coming from Harry don’t sit right with her; she’s too used to their arguing, their sly comments, their shady banter. 

“And you’re drunk.” she replies, finishing his thought. 

“ _ No, _ ” he groans, “fuck!” Harry swings his leg against a trash can, spilling the contents across the sidewalk. “Whatever, whatever. Nevermind.”

He’s taking off and Allie won’t let herself be frozen to the spot. Her hand finds the sleeve of his shirt and she yanks him backwards, almost toppling him over. Harry grabs her shoulders to steady himself, and that’s when she notices the wet glistening on his waterline. Allie’s words fail her.

“Let me go home.” he asks earnestly.

Allie’s grip loosens, partly with stunned confusion. This — whatever it is — isn’t supposed to be this emotional. It isn’t supposed to hurt them more. It isn’t supposed to make her feel like she can’t breathe when she sees him upset. If it’s supposed to make them feel anything, it’s supposed to make them feel good when they feel like shit.

She lets him go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another big boi chapter yeehaw

It’s Halloween. Allie loves Halloween.

She loves the films (spooky and goofy, not horror or scary; The Nightmare Before Christmas is a favourite of hers) and the sweet treats, the costumes and decorations. It was never her parents or Cassandra’s favourite thing, so they stopped trick or treating when Allie was still pretty young. Rationing is too tight for anyone to give up their candy now, so she gives up on that idea. She hears a few people around town are having low-key get togethers, and Allie invites some people round to hers for movies and popcorn and games.

Allie wants to play apple bobbing, and Grizz had told her a while ago about an area not too far out of town where he’d found a small orchard—if the apples were good. It’s the perfect time to pick some, and she plans to collect enough for the town too. Wrapped up warm, she sets off with a basket to do some apple picking. The air’s crisp and pleasant, and Allie puts in some earphones and tries to relax a little.

It turns out that the orchard is close to Harry’s. What a fucking coincidence. She’s hardly even seen Harry since the party at the church last month, and what she’s heard about him hasn’t been good.

He spends his time in bed, the blinds closed, eating little and showering less. His decline hasn’t come out of nowhere, and it worries her. She’s nervous about reaching out, knowing that their conversations can turn from just a kindling of a flame to a full blown fire _very_ fast.

She finds the orchard, and manages to salvage a whole basketful of undamaged apples. It’s weirdly reassuring, to find food growing so naturally in a place where everything has been uncertain. It gives her hope.

On Allie’s way back, she spots him. She has to pass back by Harry’s house on her way home, and she’s in a hurry due to the weight of the apples, but her eyes briefly catches two figures stood close together round the side of Harry’s house. Allie’s hidden by enough trees and foliage to not be seen, so she watches as the two exchange conversation. Something about the nature of the conversation tells her she should keep walking.

It’s Harry and Campbell, she realises belatedly, anxiety and worry churning in her stomach. The pair of them together does nothing but stress her out, especially knowing how manipulative Campbell is and how vulnerable Harry can be. Gripping her basket tighter, she creeps a little closer towards the house, keeping herself behind enough foliage to stay hidden.

Harry looks upset; he’s fidgeting anxiously whilst Campbell is totally at ease, and totally in control. Suddenly, Campbell hands something over to Harry and takes off, but not before patting the other guy on the shoulder. Harry’s shoulders jerk like he’s a rag doll. Allie can’t make out what Harry’s been passed, but he pockets it quickly and heads inside.

Nothing about it feels right. She knows what her gut thinks was going on, but she doesn’t want to believe it. Before she can really think it over, Allie’s feet have carried already her the distance between the woodland and Harry’s doorstep.

He doesn’t answer, shocker, so she lets herself in. The house seems empty, with most people probably working elsewhere in town or napping in their rooms. It’s gotten messier than the last time she was here, but she easily spots Harry in his kitchen amongst whole mountains of unwashed plates and pans.

“Hey, Harry,” he has his back to her and visibly jumps out of his skin at the sound of her voice.

“Jesus Christ!” he gasps, clutching his chest. “Fuck, Allie. Are you trying to kill me?”

Allie shrugs, “not particularly.” She heaves the basket of apples onto a free space on his kitchen counter. “Want any apples? Or have you got some?”

Harry looks at her dubiously and jerks his head in the direction of what had previously been a fruit bowl. Now it was a holder for mouldy fruit and cigarette butts.

“Nice,” she grimaces.

“What are you doing here?” he’s acting strange, void of any familiarity that should’ve been between them. The stubble on his jaw needs shaving, and the jumper he’s shirked on has a few stains on it.

“Routine visit?”

Harry narrows his eyes, “bullshit.”

“I was picking apples nearby for a Halloween get together, and I thought I’d drop in. Is that a crime, Bingham?”

A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, so quick she almost misses it. “I think we’re on a little more than surname terms by now.”

“It just sounds cooler than Harry. Harry’s such a white bread name. Boring.” she’s trying to banter with him in a bid to get a different, more familiar side out of him. It’s hidden right behind the tiredness in his eyes. But the conversation feels a little stilted, and Allie just wants to shake his shoulders and ask him _what the fuck is going on._

“Cause Allie is _so_ much more original,” he fires back, “and you don’t need to drop in. I’m fine. Really.”

His fingers tap anxiously against the counter he’s leaning on. He crosses and uncrosses his legs a hundred times. His eyes flitter from every corner of the room then back to her, as if he’s waiting for someone else to appear. Everything about his demeanour is on edge.

“You should come tonight, to my Halloween thing. It’ll be fun,” she nods her head towards the basket of apples. She’s not quite sure what overcomes her to invite him, because she knows that it won’t go down quite so well with her friends.

Harry’s brow quirks, “hm, tempting.” It’s a sarcastic response, but she can sense the ghost of a smile on his lips.

“Great. I’ll see you there!” she shouts over her shoulder as she picks up the basket and heads out. When she turns back a final time, Harry’s attention has already been diverted to a little orange bottle he brings out of his jeans pocket.

 

—

 

“You did _what?_ ” Gordie is staring at Allie like she just told him the moon is fake.

Allie shrugs, “I invited Harry. Have you seen him lately? He’s a little low on friends.”

“And that’s my problem how?”

“Gordie,” she sighs.

The others are putting up decorations around the house, but Will steps into the conversation at her exasperated tone.

“Everything okay?”

“Allie invited Harry tonight.” Gordie rats her out without hesitation and she glares at him.

Will’s forehead creases with confusion. “Is this a make a wish situation?”

“C’mon, guys. I— I’m aware of the discontent for him. But he— I think he’s really struggling, with everything.” The boys stare at her as if her words are going in one ear and coming straight out the other. She can hear their words without them saying them; _everyone’s struggling._ “He might not come, anyway.”

“We,” Will says, “can only pray. Hey, Helena!”

From the living room, Helena peers around the door frame. A string of paper pumpkins are hung around her neck. For someone who’s deeply Christian, she seems to enjoy Halloween just as much as Allie.

“What?” Helena asks.

“Pray Harry doesn’t come tonight, will you?”

“Harry’s coming?” Now Kelly appears, a frown etched across her face.

Allie feels like the headlights have been turned right onto her. The group all stare at her expectantly. It’s almost as if she’s invited Judas to a party of the disciples.

“It’s my house,” Allie deadpans. “And he might not come. He probably won’t.”

It seems like he isn’t going to turn up, right up until just before midnight. The games they organised have been played, and Allie feels like a kid again, just for a night. After fighting over what film to watch, she lets Grizz put on Beetlejuice as long as they get to watch Corpse Bride next. She’s in the kitchen popping more corn when the door rings. As she passes her friends in front of the TV to answer the door, they’re all staring at her with tense, knowing expressions.

Harry’s on her doorstep, bundled up in a sweater with his hands shoved in the pockets.

“Hi,” she breathes, having just about accepted that he wasn’t coming.

“Hey.” He chews his lip and stares at the floor.

“Wanna come in?”

There’s a minutes hesitation before he nods and she lets him step inside. He spots the group in the living room, who’ve all turned to watch the TV like he doesn’t exist. Harry’s jaw clenches.

“You can help me in the kitchen,” Allie offers, frowning offhandedly at her friends.

Harry follows her down the corridor, his hands stuck inside his pockets. He’s taken the time out of his day between this afternoon and now to shave, making him look a little closer to the boy he was before everything happened. His eyes flicker around the room like he doesn’t know where to look, and he carries himself like he doesn’t fit in anywhere.

“I’m just doing popcorn,” she explains, emptying the contents of the pan into a bowl. “Everything okay?”

His response is delayed; he’s fidgeting like he has ants in his trousers. “Fine, yeah.”

Allie pushes the bowl to the side and sighs. “Why’d you come?”

He stares at her blankly. “You asked me to.”

“I invited you, yeah.”

Harry swallows thickly, “you want me to leave.”

The assumption catches her off guard, it’s a painful and self deprecating jump to a conclusion seems very unlike him. He’s _nervous_ , she realises.

“ _No_ ,” she sighs, “no, that’s not it. I just— didn’t expect you to actually come. And the others—”

He turns his head up to look at her. The expression in his eyes is uncomfortably blank, but his features twitch. “They don’t want me here.”

Allie doesn’t reply. She puts the pan she used to pop the corn in the kitchen sink and braces herself against the counter.

“Okay, this was a mistake.” he says.

She doesn’t know what to do but she doesn't want him to leave. But he can’t really stay. It _was_ a mistake, but she knew that before she asked him to come. She’s imagining the awkward pain of having him sit and watch a film with her friends and it’s unbearable. But...

“Harry, stop.”

He stills. She hadn’t expected him to actually obey her. Allie squares up to him, the top of her head only coming up to his chin. He’s at least 5 inches taller than her, but she’s not one to let something like that stop or intimidate her. The closeness between them is aching. Her mind is inexplicably clouded with the too-distant memory of his skin against hers.

“Stay,” _please_.

His lips are pulled down to hers by an invisible string, with both his hands on either side of her face. She tastes mint, and he smells fresh and fragrant. The idea that someone could so easily walk in on them right now is both exhilarating and terrifying, and she thinks he feels that too. As she loops her arms around his neck, he moves his hands to pull her closer into him by her waist. Kissing him is dizzying, and she doesn’t want to stop.

“I’ll stay,” he murmurs into her ear, his thumb drawing circles on her skin over the fabric of her shirt.

Allie gets his drift. But she can’t exactly disappear off upstairs with him right now and not raise obvious suspicion. He kisses a slow path along her jaw, her fingers carding through his hair. She likes it longer, she decides.

“That’s not a good idea,” she tells him honestly.

He kisses her again, a little harder. “I don’t want to go home.” He says, and it’s a sentence that seems littered with a hundred different reasons as to why. Home isn’t home, not really. It hasn’t been for a long time.

She bits her lip, then; “When the movie’s over, I can ask them to leave. If you can stay until then.”

She can’t believe she’s compromising her friendships and her morals for him. _Selfish_ , a voice in her head mutters. For a moment it sounds a little like Cassandra, she thinks. But something lifts in Harry’s expression at her words, his hands a little softer as they ghost the curves of her hips. Allie nods, gathering herself back together, then rips her body away from him.

“Grab that,” she points towards the popcorn bowl and heads back into the living room, leaving Harry to follow behind her.

Too many eyes burn into her when she returns to her friends. She’s missed a good fifteen minutes of the movie, and as she reclaims her seat on the sofa Will siddles up closer to her.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

Harry enters, awkwardly sitting himself down on the floor behind everyone else and in front of the sofa. None of them look at him.

“Yeah, of course.” Allie puts on a smile. Will nods slowly, but his eyes flicker briefly down to her lips, which still feel hot. And presumably look a little red. She turns away quickly back to the TV, and snuggles deeper into the sofa.

There’s shame creeping into the heat of her cheeks. Or maybe it’s excitement. A little of both, she admits to herself. The shame comes with keeping it all a secret from her friends — especially Will. She knows he wouldn’t understand, that he’d just chastise her and berate her for it, for _him_. Harry’s sat less than a metre from her feet, and she has a good view of his mop of dark curls fixed towards the TV. Then he gets his phone out of his back pocket, the brightness low, and begins typing.

Allie’s phone vibrates.

**_Harry Bingham_** _: I don’t get it._

**_Allie Pressman_** _: Get what?_

**_Harry Bingham_** _: the film_

**_Allie Pressman_** _: Well, you missed the beginning of it dumbass_

**_Harry Bingham_** _: it’s dumb_

**_Allie Pressman_** _: You’re dumb._

“Psh, Allie,” Will nudges her and whispers, one of his brows arched high. He’s staring at her phone in her hands with a dubious look.

“It’s Elle,” she murmurs reassuringly, and lying through her teeth. “Just checking in on her.”

**_Harry Bingham_** _: I’d rather be kissing you rn_

**_Allie Pressman_** _: Impatient much?_

**_Harry Bingham_** _: i’m used to getting what i want_

**_Allie Pressman_** _: Generally, I don’t think that applies to humans_

**_Harry Bingham_** _: you don’t want me too?_

Even though it’s all happening silently on a screen, Allie feels like she’s exposing herself in front of them all. Her friends are enjoying the film and all Allie wants is to be spread beneath or on top of Harry Bingham right now.

_**A** _ **_llie Pressman_ ** _: What’s the point in asking questions you already know the answer to?_

**_Harry Bingham_** _: the satisfaction of knowing i’m right_

**_Allie Pressman_** _: Dick._

**_Harry Bingham_** _: talking dirty already? i like it_

She puts the phone down. Harry doesn’t have to turn her way for her to know there’s a grin painted on his face just from winding her up. The rapid flux they have going on between moments of intense vulnerability and having standoffs is giving her whiplash.

As Beetlejuice ends, Allie notices that half of her friends have drifted off at some point. Kelly’s head rests against Will’s legs, and Becca is curled up on Sam’s lap. Grizz tries to suppress a yawn and fails. Gordie and Luke are asleep, with Helena’s hand carding through her boyfriend’s hair softly. Harry’s still facing the TV, but he seems awake from his composure.

“I think we should call it a night,” Allie suggests, “it’s been great having you guys. But we all need some beauty sleep, I think.”

The others nod reluctantly, rising and grabbing their things in the dim light of the living room lamps. But Will lives with her; that’s inescapable. She’s showing everyone out until Harry’s the last left, albeit Will.

“Harry,” Will says his name as if it isn’t his name, as if it means something else entirely. The two boys stare at each other, Harry making no move to leave.

Allie intervenes; “Harry and I have a few things to discuss in regards to the town,” she lies. All this lying to Will isn’t getting any easier, but neither is the truth.

Will’s jaw shifts as he looks between them uneasily. “You won’t be long?”

She knows that he’s just worried about her, that he can be overprotective and think he’s looking out for her. But Allie feels babysat, sometimes. She knows she asked the Guard and Will to be their for her, every step of the way, but she _can_ handle some things on her own.

“I’ll say goodnight before I go to bed.” The smile she puts on is supposed to be reassuring, but she can feel the corners of her mouth twitch. Harry’s eyes on Will are almost verging on a glare.

“Okay,” Will nods uncertainly, and as he makes his way up the stairs, Allie and Harry stay glued to their respective spots. When he’s out of sight, Harry’s shoulders noticeably slacken as he exhales and relaxes.

“Jesus,” he mutters, “is he your dad or what?”

“He’s my best friend,” she shrugs. That’s a truth.

Harry chews his lip, “is it nice?”

“What?”

“Having a best friend.”

Allie feels her expression shift into another, softer gear. “Have you never had one?”

He shrugs noncommittally, “not in the way that you have Will.”

“I don’t _have_ Will, and you’re making me feel worse.” she admits.

“You’re telling me that if you were in trouble, he wouldn’t drop everything? And how am I making you feel worse?” there’s a hint of offence in his tone, but Allie suspects it’s more defensive than anything. She supposes it’s true that Harry’s never had a best friend like her friendship with Will, at least not one she ever saw him with at school. He wasn’t on the team with the Guard, and if anything his money was the source of his popularity. Maybe Kelly had been his closest friend.

“I keep lying to him to cover my ass because of _you_ ,” she says it accusingly, but she doesn’t really mean it. The heat to her words isn’t here.

Harry takes a few steps closer, encroaching on her personal space. There’s a strange smile on her face, the kind that makes her want to punch him and kiss him, all at the same time. “I’m sorry, let me make it up to you.”

“Shut up,” she says hotly against his lips, their hands reaching for each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos n comments keep me and this fic alive and yall have been so nice it makes me !!!! I'm so grateful ty<33  
> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pretty much smut from start to finish but not explicit and with ~angst~ because i can't write happy relationships apparently  
> also i edited this a bit but there might still be mistakes I'm sorry!!!!

Allie’s back hits the wall by the archway to the living room. It doesn’t hurt because her nerves are focused almost entirely on everything that Harry’s making her feel. His hands work to shirk off their shirts, ridding them of just some of the fabric separating their bodies. Everything they’re doing is wordlessly  _ loud _ . They can’t actually be loud; the house has thin walls, and Will isn’t that far away, but they’re loud regardless. The pounding in her chest is loud. His lips, hot against her own, are loud. The palms of his hands groping her ass is loud. But their mouths are silent.

Harry pushes her jeans down to her ankles, and she wishes momentarily that she’d worn cuter underwear, before deciding that they’re way past that. He tastes like buttered popcorn, it’s comforting and makes her feel warm. With one hand on her neck and his lips tracing the line of her jaw, he takes her muffled moans as invitation enough to dip his other hand beneath the line of her underwear. Allie’s head knocks a picture frame on the wall as her back arches.

“Shh,” Harry murmurs teasingly. His thumb works her up gently whilst he has two fingers pumping in and out of her at a slow pace.

She leans into him so she can bury her face in his neck, and bites into his skin to suppress anymore noises from her that he’s purposefully trying to illicit. The hand that was on her neck has transgressed to palming her breasts through the thin fabric of her bralet, fingers stroking harder over her nipples. Allie can feel the heat building in the pit of her stomach, her breath caught in her throat.

“Fuck you,” she mutters, digging her nails into his shoulderblades. 

“We’ll get to that,” he laughs, a ridiculous and typically Harry response, but he increases the pace and forcefulness of his movements inside her. Allie’s hips buck towards him, desperate for more. Her mind latches back onto how he smells; like mint and pine, like a boy’s body wash. She’s glad he’s not wearing any of the fancy cologne he used to douse himself in until it suffocated anyone within a five foot radius. He smells more natural this way, more inviting.

The Allie she is now, who lets herself get fucked by Harry Bingham against a wall in her own home, is not an Allie she ever thought she’d be. She doesn’t hate it. But she isn’t sure it’s a version of herself that’ll last. For now, it feels  _ good _ . When she’s alone with Harry, it’s as if the rest of New Ham doesn’t exist. When everyone else is around, Allie’s the grieving and demanding leader, and Harry’s the rich troublemaker with an ego. They’re not those people when they’re together. Allie prefers not being those people.

Her knees shake a little as she gets closer to a climax, and Harry’s spare hand is there to keep her steady. He guides her over the height of her ecstasy with kisses on her collarbone. Harry’s about to wipe his fingers clean when she snatches his wrist, not sure what’s overcome her. Gingerly, she raises his hand to her own mouth, and pulls his fingers between her lips. She hardly thinks of it as tasting  _ herself _ , not when Harry’s staring at her like  _ that. _ Like she’s his only reason for being.

“God, Allie.” 

She’s dragging him into the living room. She’s pulling him down onto the sofa. She’s tugging off his trousers so she can sit on his waist, their heats pressed together through the soft fabric of their underwear. All the while, Harry’s smile is plastered on his face like a child on Christmas day. They’re enjoying this too much when they’re being so damn risky. Allie’s half expecting Will to walk down the stairs any moment now, but if he has any inkling of what’s going on she prays he won’t, for his own sake.

Harry’s kissing her hungrily (will he ever have her fill of her?) and pulling her into him with his hands roughly palming her ass. She pauses to take her bra off, exposing her chest to him, and he has a moment to take her in generously. His eyes are dark when he focuses them back on hers. The length of his dick presses hard against her inner thighs, and Allie’s still sensitive from him getting her off earlier, so the friction is driving her  _ crazy _ .

“We  _ have  _ to be quiet,” she stresses during breaths. 

He nods, one hand wandering from her back to her front. His hand fits over her breast, and she spares a moment to wonder if the skin of his hands are any rougher than the first time she felt them like this on her skin.

“I’m serious,” but she laughs a little breathlessly as she says it, because he has his mouth on her chest and is teasing her nipple lightly between his teeth. Recklessly, she hopes he leaves bruises. Any marks left below her neckline are sure to be hidden from everyone else. They’ll be just for her.

“Well, unless you want to go back to mine…” Harry trails a path of kisses from her chest to her jaw.

Allie’s eyes roll, “absolutely not.”

“Impatient much?” Harry laughs into her mouth.

She doesn’t tell him to shut up; she  _ makes _ him shut up. Allie’s hand pulls down Harry’s boxers, her hand moving to stroke him tenderly but he’s already hard enough. It’s exhilarating to know she can make him feel this way, to feel power not just in herself but in her sexuality. With freshly instilled brazen confidence, Allie’s rids herself of the rest of her own underwear and positions herself above him comfortably. Harry’s head is against the arm of the sofa, his hands on either side of her waist. 

“There’s a condom in my wallet, it’s in my trouser pocket.” he nods to the long discarded jeans on her living room floor.

The sting is still there as he fits inside her. It’s much duller than her first time and time since, but they don’t hookup regularly enough for Allie to have really adjusted to the sensation. It takes a few slow pumps for her to really settle into it. She runs her hands along his chest, her hips rolling.

She’s sinking, and she’s scared.

It’s harder to feel scared when they’re together like this, but she’s still scared. When she’s with Harry, it’s terrifying that nothing else seems to matter. They’re from such different worlds, even now. There’s an element of escapism to their attraction. And he’s beautiful, in a way that makes her feel drunk. He’s attractive in this soft yet hot way that she expects a lot of rich boys are; soft with privilege, hot with arrogance and pride. But, Harry feels different. He can be a dick, too, but he’s a lot less of a dick around her. Is the Harry she sees in private the real Harry, or the Harry he pretends to be with her?

She worries that their partially shared trauma of losing Cassandra and the aftermath has bonded them irreparably, and wonders how their relationship would be if her sister was still here. She’d still have slept with him once, but would it have happened again? Would New Ham be better off with if Cassandra was leading? Would Harry be sinking, too? Because she knows he is.

Harry’s making more noise than he should, enjoying Allie riding atop of him far too much for two people who are trying to be quiet about having sex in her living room. She presses her mouth to his, hard, hoping to silence him. But the heat building inside of her is undeniable, and Allie’s groans softly against his lips. The friction she feels being on top hits more bases for her than being below him.

“You’re amazing,” he murmurs, his neck arching back with pleasure. 

His affirmations make her go a little fast, making his hands tighten on her hips. 

“Fuck, Allie,” they’re both slick with sweat now. Harry’s flushed and rosy, a euphoric smile etched across his face. 

Allie bites down on her lip to keep a grin from slipping out. “You okay?”

“More than.” he hums, bucking his hips up to meet her movements.

She comes apart like untying a bow. Smooth and fluid motions lead to a spasming, tightening sensation, where everything comes to a point. Allie tastes blood from trying so hard not to make noise. Harry, however, doesn’t make as much of an effort. He climaxes a moment after her, and Allie slaps her hand haphazardly over his mouth as he groans.

“ _ Harry _ ,” she hisses, but his chest shakes with laughter.

“Sorry, fuck, that was…” 

Allie kisses him, partly to keep him quiet and partly because she can’t think of anything she’d rather do. She lets her body collapse against his, and his arms curl around her. Holding her close with her head on his chest, Harry finally falls silent. Through the open window, Allie can hear Cicadas outside. 

It’s strange moment of calm. She doesn’t feel the need to flee, this time. Harry is making no moves to get dressed and leave. They’re both panting on her sofa, naked and cooling down. Rarely does Allie feel like they’re taking their time; their sex is often desperately needy, wanting or heated. The aftermath is usually cold and empty. 

Harry’s fingers move gently through her hair. She likes the feeling of his chest rising and falling with his breath, it’s grounding. It’s comforting. That feeling of sinking nags at the corner of her mind, though, just out of sight.

“Do you want to stay?” she finds herself asking, despite her anxieties that this doesn’t feel the same for Harry as it does for her.

He doesn’t reply straight away, and she doesn’t look up at him.

“I shouldn’t. Not sure Will wants me making him pancakes in the morning, or anything.”   


It’s a rejection veiled with a joke. Trying to hide her disappointment, Allie questions him. “You’d make pancakes? You can make pancakes?”

“No, well, maybe. Yeah. I’m not inept, you know. I can cook.”

Allie scoffs. “You’ll have to prove it to me.”

“Maybe, sometime.”

She’s stricken by his aversion to committing to anything suggesting the future. She knows that their future, as a society, is uncertain and terrifying. But she’s only asking to see him a little more, to be with him in the early hours of the morning, to have tea on the porch and watch the sun fill the sky. Maybe that’s too much to ask of him right now. Allie feels a little colder, suddenly, and pulls herself away from Harry in search of her shirt and underwear.

His eyes follow her around the room. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” she nods, pulling her shirt over her head.

Harry purses his lips. “Right.” 

“Let’s just… let’s just not, okay? Clearly, this is good as it is and you don’t want to change anything. That’s fine.”

His brows pull into a frown. “Right, yeah.”

“It’s fine.” the corners of her mouth twitch with a faux smile.

“Fine.” 

He gets changed in silence. She’s got the memory of a few hours previous replaying itself in her mind.  _ Okay, this was a mistake, _ he had said. Mistake. Was something that had happened on more than one occasion a mistake? They couldn’t be that foolish, surely.  _ Stay _ , she remembers herself saying, not just then but now, encoded in her invitation for him to join her in sleep. How could he say yes then and not now? The part of her brain reserved for anxieties and worry chasitised her for being so stupid. 

_ Allie chews her lower lip, “yeah, no. This isn’t— this isn’t a thing.” she clarifies, gesturing between them. “That was… good. Really good. But I think we both got what we needed.” _

Those had been her own words, months ago. A defensive reflex of an action, putting up her wall before he got too far beyond it. Allie felt differently now, like she wouldn’t mind if he broke down that wall a little. 

But whilst Allie had been deconstructing her wall, Harry had been building his up. She shows him out the door and resists kissing him goodbye. It’s so tempting that she clenches her fists by her sides, digging her nails into her palms. Harry hesitates in the doorframe, something playing on his mind. A cloud moves over his expression and the moment passes. She watches Harry walk back up her driveway.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't remember if it's ever said who else lives in Allie's house, like if the guard live there etc so if they do and i got it wrong many apologies I'm just a fool lemme know lmao. also poor will ahaha, bets on if he heard them? rip  
> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mention of drug use in this chap and the usual angst lmao  
> also i should probably mention that the title of this fic is from it's not love by lontalius pls listen to it !!

Allie knows she should have caught on to how serious Harry’s problems were sooner. Of course there were signs; the tired, sunken eyes, the deterioration in the care for his appearance, his new reclusive nature. The pills she’d seen him with.

Not that she was putting it all on her, but she felt somewhat like she’d failed him. Everyone around New Ham had been throwing around the word  _ depression _ when talking about Harry’s state, but in an age where many of the kids at school used depression so flippantly, she’d taken it with a pinch of salt. They’d already cut his rations in half, and when Jason approached her about cutting them again because he  _ still  _ wasn’t showing up to work, Allie knew something just wasn’t right.

Harry had life easy on the surface; a wealthy family with good jobs, a big house, good university prospects and never a reason to struggle for anything. Most of the town didn’t see the Harry that was underneath all of that, the Harry who’d lost his dad, whose mom was having an affair, who took care of his sister by himself most days, who struggled to cope. Allie hadn’t seen that side of him until everything had been taken away from them all. Maybe she never would have, if they hadn’t been thrown into this awful situation. Harry’s walls had come crashing down around him, and he’d slowly become a moody, irritable recluse.

His room is messier than last time — was that possible? She feels like she always thinks that. Allie has to tiptoe across his floor as to not step on anything. Harry is curled beneath his duvet, either asleep or just plain ignoring her. The blinds are shut and look like they’ve been collecting dust.

“Harry?”

He grumbles indistinctly. 

“Hey, Harry.” she reaches out and places a hand gently on his shoulder. Reluctantly, he rolls over to face her, eyes blinking sleepily. He doesn’t look well. Dark bags have made a home under his eyes. His hair is messy and probably unwashed, and he clearly hasn’t shaved in a while. But when he looks up at her from his foetal position, his eyes are unnervingly sad. He is so small, so vulnerable. There’s a glimmer of some recognition in his eyes at the sight of her, but it’s dim.

Allie’s chest feels like it’s collapsing, “what happened?”

Instead of answering, he silently takes a piece of her curled hair between his fingers and stares at it. He’s unnerving her, verging on a shell of the Harry she’d once thought she was beginning to know and understand. This is a huge step back in the wrong direction. Even the bitter, angry Harry of a few months ago was better than this. His hand goes limp as he drops the lock of her hair, and his eyes flutter shut.

“Harry, hey, talk to me.” she moves to sit on the side of his bed, picking up a bundle of clothes to make space for herself. As she moves them, something falls out of the pile and rolls onto the floor, small and orange.

She stares at the bottle, but Harry seems completely unphased. Hoping it isn’t what she thinks it is, Allie cautiously picks it up. It looks the same as the container she’d seen him with on Halloween. It’s empty. 

“Xanax, Harry? Seriously?” anger flares inside of her. Harry rolls onto his side, facing away from her.

“Leave me alone.”

“No.” her grip on the bottle tightens. “I can’t let you waste away in here. I thought you’d get over whatever it was that was holding you down, but you’re fuelling this numbness, Harry. You’re letting this black hole suck you in deeper and deeper. I can’t stand by and watch you  _ lose  _ yourself.”  _ Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you _ , her mind cries, without much venom but with enough feeling for tears to prickle in the corner of her eyes.

“Then don’t. Go home.”

“I can’t.”

Silence swallows them, angry and standoffish, until he rolls back towards her. 

“Why the fuck do you care, Allie?” he doesn’t sound irritated; he’s tired, and confused and infinitely sadder than she’d have ever thought.

Her jaw clenches. But how could he ask her that? After all their time together, did he really think that she didn’t care about him? 

“Jason,” she calls out to the Guard, who are standing outside Harry’s bedroom door, “come in here, please.”

Harry visibly tenses at their presence, shifting to sit up a little more in bed. 

“Why are they here? You’ve already cut my rations, I’ve been punished, Allie. Leave me--”

“Clear his room,” she asks of them tersely, “everything on the floor. Then search for drugs. Any you find, hand directly to me.”

“What the fuck, you can’t do that!” Harry protests, trying to scramble out of bed to stop them. 

Clark clamps both hands on his shoulders, pinning him to the bed. In full health, Harry might’ve stood a chance against him. In his current state, Harry gives up any kind of struggle after mere seconds. His body falls limp against the mattress, his eyes glazing over. There’s not enough of him left.

“You know, if he’s really addicted he’ll find shit elsewhere.” Jason warns, holding an armful of clothes and trash.

Allie can’t tear her eyes away from Harry’s defeated frame.

“I know.”

 

—

 

Once the Guard have left, she perches back on the side of Harry’s bed. Allie lets the silence simmer between them. It’s late afternoon and outside she can hear birds, and people talking indistinctly in the garden. The weather’s nice; cool and autumnal, the sun creeps in hazily through the blinds.

“You should shower,” she suggests. His fist curls around the bed sheet gently, the only thing that suggests he’s listening to her. “Or at least eat something. When was the last time you ate? I could make you toast.”

Harry grunts lowly. 

“Listen, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that this all had to happen and I’m sorry I didn’t notice and I’m sorry this is all such a  _ shit _ situation, but I need you.” She lets her words hang there for a moment, but he still hardly moves. “I need you to be a human, to get out of this bed and sort yourself the fuck out.”

He’s lay on his front and Allie pushes his shoulder roughly, trying to shake him back to clear consciousness. 

“I want to sleep,” he says, muffled against his pillow.

“That’s  _ all  _ you’ve been doing, Harry.”

She pushes him again, harder, and he flips onto his other side with disgruntled protest. More out of annoyance with her than anything, Harry begins to move. Once Allie’s coerced him into sitting up, she works on getting him out of the goddamn bed. The burst of energy he had over the confiscation of his drugs has drained from him entirely, leaving him limp and defeated. By some miracle of God she manages to get him into his en suite, and goades him into taking a shower.

It’s strange, seeing him so extremely vulnerable and bare under these circumstances. Nothing about her feels sexually charged; Allie feels  _ something _ tight in her chest, but it’s the kind of indescribably weighty feeling that makes her want to interlace her fingers with his and smell his hair. He keeps his boxers on in the shower, as if she’s not seen him naked before. Allie supposes he must feel similarly about being exposed under such different circumstances, but she’s surprised he has enough emotion left to feel any shame or embarrassment.

Five minutes pass and he’s just standing there, letting the water batter him. His eyes are closed. He’s drowning. Not literally — Allie can see that now — but he’s had his head under the water for longer than Allie had thought. 

She shrugs off her shirt and jeans until she’s down to her underwear and slips into his shower. Harry’s eyes follow her blankly, his lips parted in unspoken question. Allie reaches behind his head silently and pulls his shampoo off the rack.

The water’s warm and she tries to ignore the uncomfortable way her underwear clings to her skin as it rapidly dampens. Squirting some shampoo into her palm, she stretches up and begins massaging it into his hair.

“Allie,” he murmurs, eyes closing again. 

Her fingers work the shampoo gingerly into suds, wiping them away before they get in his eyes.  _ Tenderness _ , she thinks.  _ When was the last time Harry experienced some tenderness? _ Maybe not since things were good with Kelly, who’s one of the most tender people she thinks she knows. 

After washing the bubbles out of his hair, she begins to lather up a bar of soap and gently rub it over his arms and chest. Harry leans an infinitesimally small amount into her touch, just enough for Allie to know that he  _ trusts  _ her to do this. 

Once she plants a small kiss on his exposed skin, she can’t stop. She doesn’t care that he tastes of soap, because he’s moulding to her hands and becoming compliant to her touch. His head tips down, forehead bumping against her own.

She kisses his left shoulder. “Feel any better?”

Harry hums softly, and nudges her head gently to tilt her head up towards his. His hands are still by his side as he kisses her, and it’s much lighter than any way he’s ever touched her before.

Every joint and muscle in her body aches. The fact — and it is a fact — that she’s ended up caring about Harry Bingham this damn much sets her nerves on fire. From the first time they slept together, to all the times after that, and all the spare moments they stole together, she was falling. And it wasn’t a slow, smooth fall. It was a fall littered with bumps and obstacles. She imagines a New Ham without Harry and instantly grieves the hole it would leave in her already broken heart. She doesn’t know what that means, though. What is Harry to her?  _ Hookup  _ is too little a word and  _ boyfriend _ is too big.

_ It’s not love. _

Allie finishes up making sure Harry’s clean and jumps out of the shower, taking a deep breath as she steals one of his towels. Burying herself in the fabric, she isn’t sure she can face Harry without feeling like she’s burning up. Luckily, he doesn’t say anything. He steps out of the shower after her and sidles past, searching for a towel and fresh clothes silently.

Later, she’s stood by his bed as she asks: “when did it start? The drugs I mean.”

Harry’s shouldering himself into a loose t-shirt, the soft, exposed skin of his stomach making her heart do cartwheels. He shrugs at her, offering a fake one sided smile. “A while ago.”

“Because of your dad?” 

His jaw grinds, “yeah.”

“Where— where do you even get it from?”

“We live in small town America, it’s not Antarctica. More people deal than you think, Allie.”

“Right.” She grips her hands together tightly. She thinks of the pills that Cassandra used to take for her heart defect, and the amount of times their parents had warned her about not taking more than the prescribed amount. “So since we’ve been here, you’ve been using?”

Harry nods.

“All those times we—”

He takes a step towards her with sudden motivation. “No,” he asserts. “I was never high when we were together. I mean, I might’ve been drunk once or twice, but that was real. Fuck, this is so messed up.”

He’s laughing like he’s not just admitted to being a drug addict, like he’s not dependant on something that will eventually run out in their new world. Like he’s not completely deteriorated because of it.

“It has to stop.”

“I know.”

Allie’s face contorts angrily, “do you? Do you know, Harry? You’re destroying yourself! How can you stand here and tell me you know it needs to stop as if you weren’t fucking high a few hours ago! How can you expect me to stand by and watch you do this to yourself?”

Now the shame finally makes an appearance, colouring his cheeks and ears red as his face changes, crestfallen. 

“It’s not your problem, Allie. It never has been.”

“You made it my problem! You made it my problem when you made me fucking care about you! Fuck.”  _ Don’t cry, don’t cry. _

He’s so far away and not close enough, he’s just out of reach and a million miles away, all whilst being just an arms length away from her.

“I didn’t ask for that.”

It feels like a punch to the gut.

“And you don’t care about me?”

“I did  _ not  _ say that.”

Allie steps into his personal space and grabs his hands with her own. “If you care about me at all, you’ll stop. You didn’t ask for me to care about you but I  _ do. _ You’re going to have to fucking deal with it.”

Her heart is beating out of her chest and up out of her throat, and she swallows thickly as Harry maintains pained eye contact with her. The bags under his eyes are blue, his cheeks hollowed out and his stubble long unshaven. She isn’t sure when the last time he saw the sun was.

“You win.” he says, defeated.

The pads of his thumbs stroke her skin gingerly. Allie feels like all of her nerves are electrified. He’s poised in a way that makes her unsure if he’s about to run away from her or into her.

“Win what?” she asks.

“I’m in love with you.”

_ It’s not love.  _

The words seem to slip from his lips as loosely and easily as saying  _ I’m sorry  _ or  _ excuse me _ to a stranger on the street is. The ease with which he says it and the way his face hardly changes at all freezes her entire body. Her silence swells and swells as they wordlessly hold hands. 

“You don’t have to say anything.” he adds.

She’s not sure she can. She’s not sure she could.

“Okay,” Allie nods. 

Harry’s body visisby shifts, the tension in his shoulders sagging. Allie can’t do anything but stare at him. It’s all too much. She has sex with Harry; She cares about Harry; Harry’s a drug addict; Harry loves her. Allie hasn’t figured out which is the most unbelievable thing yet out of all of this.

“I just wanted you to know.” 

“Stop,” she whispers, “stop talking.”

Hurt flickers across his face and she really doesn’t mean it to pain him. The more he says, the more complicated it all becomes. Her mind plays the film reel of their past few months together, shaky and hazy, stitched together with comfort and hurt and sex. Allie kisses him hard.

He doesn’t need any time to reciprocate, his hands ripping out of her grip and latching onto her face. She kisses him again and again and again as if her mouth can wordlessly tell him all the things she’s too scared to say aloud. His hair is still damp, his skin is soft and fresh. It’s easy to kiss Harry — it’s hard to stop. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALRIGHTTT so we're at the end of the 6 month gap now meaning it's gonna run more in line with canon from here in but still canon-divergent obviously !!  
> thinking atm maybe 4 or so more chapter but don't hold me to that lol. thank you so so much for all the lovely responses to this fic on here and tumblr I'm so flattered and it makes me so happy !! y'all are too kind!! really motivates me to write more of this fic and more fics for this fandom:))  
> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn not to blow my own horn but i've been ON IT with these updates phew

Allie’s dead.

She may as well be, if she isn’t. Every moment she phases back into consciousness, she’s in pain. Her vision blurs, her head pounds, her chest heaves. She’s thrown up more times in the past few hours then in the past few years. There might not be anything left inside her; she feels empty.

Distantly, she’s aware of people around her. There’s shouting and lots of moving but Allie’s trapped inside her own bubble of suffering. Her dreams are hallucinogenic. In one of them she’s Cassandra, arguing with herself about something that means very little now. In another she moves in an inhuman way, as if she has four legs instead of two. She’s running through a field like her life depends on it, panic quickening her breath. Some are more like nightmares, made worse by the sickness and drug induced hysteria. 

She sees Cassandra die in her nightmares often — not as often as a few months ago, but often enough to ground her. This time, the nightmare lingers too long, taking its cruel time to show her the scene in excruciating detail. She sees her hands reach out in front of her disassociated dream body towards Cassandra, but before she can make contact with her sisters body, the scene changes. 

She’s in Harry’s bedroom, and Harry’s stood in front of her.

“You’re pathetic,” Dream Harry spits, dismissing her. “You can’t run this town, you’re not a leader. You’re just a murderer.”

Allie’s heart catches in her throat. It’s an abrupt and violent shift from a moment she’s used to relieving to something she’s never seen before that jars her. “What? I— I’m—”

“You’re a murderer.” he repeats, every syllable a punch to the gut. Dream Harry is seething with anger, but his mouth is pulled into a wicked smile. She wants to wake up  _ now.  _

He’s absolutely nothing like the Harry she knows, but exactly like the Harry she’d feared he’d become; the Harry who sees her only for the mistakes she’s made, the bad things she’s done (for the sake of the town), the insecurities she has. A Harry who sees her how she knows half the town does. 

“You’re poison. You’re a weed, polluting this town, and you need to be ripped out.”

“I’m doing my best,” she chokes, but her voice doesn’t sound like her own. It’s a pathetic plea, to someone who isn’t even real.

Dream Harry steps towards her, and Allie’s feet refuse to back away. She’s rooted to the spot. Maybe it’s karma, for always wanting to be so close to him. Now she can’t escape.

“You need to be ripped out.” he says again.

Black consumes the dream, fading Dream Harry away to nothing as the ground shifts below her feet. She’s falling, falling, falling. Or is she sinking? Allie can hardly breathe. She grasps at the emptiness, feeling like she’s screaming but hearing nothing.

There’s a few beats of the nothingness. 

Then, in the darkness, she thinks she hears Harry’s voice again. _Wake up, wake up._ _I need you._ It’s impossible because he’s not really there, is he? She hadn’t seen him at Thanksgiving. A bright light begins to creep its way into her vision. Noises flood back into her peripheral, like she’s emerging from being underwater. She’s abruptly brought back to what feels like consciousness and is extremely thankful for it. When her eyes finally adjust to the burning lights in the room, Allie’s gaze settles on Will beside her hospital bed.

He looks terrified. And exhausted.

Her chest tightens; how long has he been by her side? There’s a hazy memory of him being there at one point, panicked and upset. She remembers asking for him when the pain started to become too much and tears had prickled in her eyes. Whilst she was drifting in and out of consciousness, she supposed he eventually turned up from wherever he’d been. Allie’s so glad to see him. He’s a familiar and comforting face, looking after her and taking care of her. 

After drinking lots of water and managing successfully to keep it down, Allie feels much more herself. Her energy levels are still low, but she’s able to maintain a conversation with Will without feeling too dizzy or ill. He stays by her side, entertaining her, for longer than she can count. They fall back into an old routine.

“I really thought I was going to die,” she muses suddenly, head turned away from him. 

Will stays silent for a moment, and she worries it was too serious a thing to say so callously after such a bad night. She can tell he thought that too.

“But, you thought you were going to die when you sprained your ankle playing dodgeball.” he reasons, then, with humour: “you were always a  _ terrible _ patient.”

Allie turns to him, faux offended. “Like you’re any better.”

“I am,” he smiles, “I’m stoic and tough.”

She cocks her head, “you’re tough, but you’re not stoic. That last time you had a cold, you bitched so much you gave it to me. Your complaining gave it to me.”

“No, no. That’s not true!” he protests, despite knowing it  _ is  _ true.

“It is. The germs, they just wafted out of you every time you complained.” she exaggerates.

Will pouts. “It was a really bad cold.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“It was!”

“Pft,” Allie’s eyes roll back in her head.

“Don’t ‘pft’ me. I’m serious!” he laughs, “that was a terrible cold. You have no sympathy.”

“Stop!” she groans playfully, stretching her limbs out. Her bones crack and she yawns, “I need to pee.”

Will rises from his chair the moment she makes a move to get out of bed. “I’ll help you,” he offers, without hesitation.

“I’m not crippled, Will. I can pee by myself.” she shakes her head, but when she takes a step she feels her legs wobble. Brushing it off quickly, she throws him a hopefully convincing smile and walks out past Kelly at the desk, who’s paging through a textbook. The other girl offers her a small smile. Kelly also looks in need of some sleep, and Allie makes a mental note to thank her for saving her later.

She’s in the corridor, finding her way to the nearest bathroom, when she comes across a slumped figure in the hallway.

Harry’s back is against the wall, his body on the floor, his eyes shut as if he’s asleep. He’s wearing the same clothes she last saw him in. It’s not exactly the first place she’d have expected him to turn up, unless… No, all the drugs at the hospital have been made inaccessible unless needed and authorised. There’s no way he could get his hands on anything here. No way.

“Harry?” she calls out his name gingerly, but it jerks him awake. In his panic he hits his head against the wall.

His eyes blow wide at her appearance, and he scrambles to his feet.

“You’re okay,” he says, a little dumbfoundedly.

Allie blinks. “I— yeah, how did you know I was sick?”

His eyes flicker to the floor, “Well, I, uh, I swung by your place. You weren’t there, no one was, so I texted Kelly and she told me you’d come in and you were like, really sick.”

“So you came here.”

Harry nods, “so I came here.”

“Then why are you sat in the corridor?”

His jaw grinds. “They didn’t want me in there, and I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” he admits it with a certain bite of anger, and she imagines he had a few things to say about not being let in. But Allie can understand why too many bodies in the room might’ve been an inconvenience for Gordie and Kelly, and how Harry turning up to see Allie would’ve caused questions they couldn’t really answer just yet.

Allie’s mouth forms a silent ‘o’. His chest rises and falls as he scans her body for signs of illness, unaware that she’s probably thrown up all the evidence. She expects she still looks like shit, though.

“I  _ needed _ to make sure you were okay.” he reaffirms.

He’s stood close enough to her that wrapping her arms around him only takes a few steps. They collapse into each other’s warmth, Harry’s hands tightening around her waist. She could let her feet fall out from under her, there and then.

“I’m okay,” she assures him, burying her face in the shoulder of his jacket.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if you weren’t.” he mutters quietly. His little admissions of affection and care still catch her a little off guard. They hold the embrace, Allie thankful for both the physical and emotional support it offers. “When I heard you were here, it was like every worst case scenario played in my head on repeat.”

“Harry, I’m okay,” she repeats, “really.”

He pulls away from her, but keeps his hands on her waist. “What the fuck happened, Allie?”

“I don’t know,” she admits, “no one does. A bunch of people got sick right after thanksgiving. Could be a virus of some sort. It’s not unlikely for it to have been passed around when we were all in such close proximity.”

“I should’ve been there.”

Allie doesn’t tell him  _ no  _ because she doesn’t want to lie. He  _ should’ve _ been there, not for her, but for himself. He should’ve shaken himself out of bed and came back into the world to celebrate the day with his friends and townspeople. He has so much to work through.

“I don’t need to be babysat.” she says plainly.

“No, I know. Of course. I just— I hate that you got  _ this _ ill and I wasn’t told about it. I hate that no one thought to tell me, because no one knows how well we know each other. No one knows what goes on between us. If I hadn’t have gone round to your house, I might not even  _ know _ . That fucking sucks.”

“It’s not anyone else’s business what happens between us, Harry.”

“But I’m not ashamed, Allie. I never have been. Why would I?”

“You hated my sister; by proxy, people assume you hate me.  _ I  _ assumed that you hated me.”

Harry’s face draws into a pained expression, “I could never hate you.” 

She doesn’t want to go round in circles. They’ve had this conversation a hundred times before in a hundred different ways. The past is the past, but it continues to affect them today. He knows what people would say about them being together after what happened between him and Cassandra. 

Allie sighs, “this isn’t the time to discuss this. I really need to pee, can you please let me past you?”

He doesn’t move, but his hands drop from her side. 

“I want to be the first to know when you get ill. I want to be there to hold your hand and get you water and food or be the first face you see when you wake up. Not  _ him. _ ” Harry’s eyes fix on the door to the ward she was in with everyone, where Will sits by her empty bed, waiting loyally for her to come back.

“You know Will’s my best friend,” she reminds him carefully. The jealous side of Harry isn’t one she sees often, or one she’s sure she likes. 

“Yeah, whatever.” 

“Jesus, Harry. I can have other friends that aren’t you.”

Harry’s brows knit together. He steps back from her, “so we’re  _ friends  _ now?”

There doesn’t seem to be a word to describe what they are to each other. Not one that does them justice, anyway, but does there have to be? Can’t they just be themselves? Harry takes everything so personally and all Allie wants to do right now is curl up by his side, in his warmth. But first she has to pee.

“Harry—”

“You already know how I feel, Allie. Do I have to spell it out?”

“Stop,” she says flatly, planting her hands on his cheeks. “Stop winding yourself up over nothing. I know, okay. I know, Harry, and I’m here, I’m listening. I care about you so damn much it terrifies me. What I have with you is incomparable to anything I have — or have had — with anyone else. Please, just try to understand that.”

His eyes flicker shut, lashes brushing the tips of her thumbs. He leans into her and exhales. “Sorry — I’m sorry. I haven’t slept much. I’m being a dick to you when you’ve been through enough tonight.”

Tenderly, she presses up on her toes and kisses his cheek. His unshaven stubble is rough beneath lips as she caresses his jawline. It’s a slow, lingering kiss, a kiss that begs to live in that moment a little longer. She won’t kiss his lips as she’s just spent most of her evening throwing up, and she’s not gross.

“I’ll text you when I’m home,” she promises, “you should go home, too. You need sleep. Should I send a member of the Guard to check on you?” she says check on him, but they both know she means for someone to monitor him. He doesn’t seem high right now, but she has no idea what he’s been doing all Thanksgiving day she wasn’t there.

Harry chews his lip, “no. I’m good.”

She wants to believe him. Maybe she’s naive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, thank you so much for the lovely comments and kudos!! they keep me going<3  
> so this was my take on thanksgiving, hallie style, i hope it was different enough in a good way !! some people might have noticed that i've added a chapter count of 11, but it might be more than that... just trying to keep a goal in mind and not let this fic run away with itself... anyway yea tysm!!<2  
> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i disappeared i was on holiday !! hope this 2.4k bad boy chapter makes up for it<3

She supposes that poison isn’t too far out of the realms of reality, anymore. Not that  _ reality _ means much either. But they’ve already had one successful murder attempt, they’d be naive to asume it might not happen again, even though they had set such a harsh standard of punishment for it. Some people don’t learn.

“Why would someone poison a dish with no idea who’s gonna eat it?”

Allie chews at her bottom lip, her hands drowning in the sleeves of her sweater. She still feels a little weak, a little lightheaded, but at least she’s not dying. At least  _ no one _ died. She’s sat in her living room with Will, Gordie and Bean, and realises suddenly that she doesn’t fully trust anyone who isn’t in the room with her now. Well, maybe one other person.

“You think it’s just a coincidence that I’m one of the people who got poisoned?” Allie asks, trying not to sound paranoid. It’s a fair question.

Gordie turns around to look at her. “Did anyone offer you food without you asking for it?”

She mulls on the night before for a moment. It wasn’t her greatest Thanksgiving, not with all the tensions brewing between everyone. And Lexie’s fucking improv sketch. The memory of it still boils her blood. “No. I don’t think so.”

Bean sighs exasperatedly, “so, it was a random attack? Like, basically terrorism? What would be the point?”

“What’s the point of any terrorism?” Will asks. He’s still not caught up on his sleep after taking care of her at the hospital, and the dark circles under his eyes show. “Make us feel unsafe, force us to change how we live. Are you gonna eat food someone else cooked anymore?”

It’s a stab to her gut, the realisation that the thin layer of trust between their community has been shattered. “Fuck. Okay. We need to control the food supply better.”

“So they’ll poison the water. Start a fire. How do we stop that?” She can hear the frustration in Will’s voice.

“Who’s so angry that they would try to kill people?”

“Harry was pissed he had to work.” Gordie points out. The sound of his name makes her flinch a little. She shouldn’t be surprised that they might suspect Harry; they don’t know him like she does, they don’t know the state that he’s in or the person he is underneath his facade.

“No, Harry can’t get out of bed.” she sighs, wondering where he is at this exact moment. Is he asleep? Is he with Campbell? Is he taking drugs? “He’s not up to poisoning.”  _ But he’s up to visiting me at the hospital. _

“Well, the question is, who had the opportunity?”

 

—

 

After their meeting, she goes to Gordie for advice. Harry needs to detox. She figures Gordie might have some knowledge on it, medically, or at least know where she can find some stuff out. Unfortunately, Gordie isn’t exactly Harry Bingham’s number one fan. (Not that anyone is, right now.)

“Why the fuck should I help that guy?”

She’s seen Gordie genuinely angry on very few occasions. Anything related to Harry, he takes quite personally. It annoys Allie, because she knows his anger is rooted in what his relationship was with Cassandra. Did that make Allie a bad person for caring about Harry when Cassandra was  _ her _ sister? Harry hadn’t pulled the trigger. And she’d  _ never _ excuse the locker room talk that ultimately got her sister killed, but Allie can’t live forever with hate in her heart. And the feeling’s Allie has whenever she was around Harry seem a million miles away from hate.

“Because he needs it, Gordie. You should see him, it’s bad. It’s really bad.” she explains, searching for some empathy from him.

He crosses his arms fervently. “We all have our own shit.” 

Allie narrows her eyes. “Gordie, c’mon.”

“Do you even know what he’s been taking?” Gordie sighs, “detox isn’t the same for every drug. It depends on the substance and way of consuming and duration of use. It isn’t clean cut. It’s a long and arduous process.”

“I know he’s been taking Xanax, pretty excessively,” Allie chews her lip anxiously. The thought of him taking a whole variety of drugs worries her even more. “The guard did a search of his room but didn’t find anything else.”  _ yet _ .

“Great, so he’s on benzo’s. And he’s probably either really good at hiding them, or someone’s giving them to him.” Gordie deduces; both thoughts that have already crossed her mind. “So, even if you can help him, he could just go out and get some more and you’re right back to square one.”

“I want to do  _ something _ ,” she pleads.  _ I have to.  _ “It’s just-- it’s not right to leave him like this. It’s not. He’s still living in this town, same as us. His behaviour affects others, too.”

Gordie doesn’t seem entirely convinced, but he’s not cruel. 

“I’ll see what I can find on it.”

 

—

 

On the walk to Harry’s house, something heavy drags her down. Maybe it’s the weight of having to pull Harry through a detox kicking and screaming, for his own good, or the fact that she’s realising their relationship is going to come to light sooner or later. 

When she arrives, Kelly is heading down his driveway towards her. Allie freezes up.

“Oh, hey, Allie.” Kelly smiles, kind as ever. She looks a little tired, which Allie can’t blame her for, but still just as preppy and pretty as she did in high school. “Are you alright? How are you feeling?”

“Uh, yeah. Good, thanks.” she says, a little belatedly. Seeing Kelly here catches her off guard, and she probably sounds a little uneasy.

Kelly nods slowly, “you should probably still be getting bed rest, but I’m happy to see you out.”

“Thanks, Kelly. And thanks for everything — for saving my life,” she laughs so it doesn’t sound as serious as it is. Without Kelly and Gordie, everyone who was poisoned could’ve died.. “Really, you’re amazing.”

She blushes a little, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m just glad to see you up. Are you here to see Harry?”

Allie’s mouth hangs open for a moment too long. “I need to talk to him about his rations,” she lies.

“Ah,” Kelly shuffles awkwardly and stares at her hands, “I might’ve brought him some food, sorry. It’s just that he's not making himself anything, and he hardly  _ has  _ anything now, anyway. He kind of needs to be force fed. I just… worry about him.” she trails off, and Allie sees the sadness in her eyes. Kelly can’t just turn off caring about Harry, even if they’re not seeing each other anymore. She knows the feeling. If she could switch her feelings off, would she? Who else would care about Harry?

“That’s fine,” Allie nods, “he needs it. We’re not starving people.” But people could begin to starve soon enough.

She finds Harry in bed. A part of her had hoped that him turning up at the hospital might have represented a shift in him, that maybe he’d pull his shit together and start leaving his bed again. It seems she’d been wrong, assuming that, as she watches him curl up under his duvet. The room is a lot emptier now since the Guard cleared it whilst searching for drugs. He looks at her a little differently, perhaps scanning her for signs of illness. 

“You didn’t text me,” he mutters. Harry doesn’t seem high right now, only tired. Empty.

Allie scuffs her shoes on the floor. “I had some other stuff to deal with. Sorry.” The meeting about the poison and getting home to sleep in her  _ own _ bed had pushed her promise to text him to the back of her mind. She wonders if she should ask Harry about it — the poison — and if he knows something. Allie hadn’t been lying when she’d told the others that she didn’t think he was capable of pulling a stunt like that, both because of his mental state and because that just  _ wasn’t _ the Harry  _ she _ knew. But Harry had gotten close to Campbell, and her cousin was high on the list of suspects.

Harry holds her gaze a fraction too long, and she can see the worry there that he fails to hide. It’s unnerving how he can switch between the Harry who can’t get out of bed, to the Harry who thinks he’s in love with her, so very quickly. Years of putting on a facade have made it easy for him. Years of hiding his hurt behind the mask of the privileged rich boy, the high school king. 

“Kelly bring you that?” Allie jerks her head to the half eaten sandwich on his bed. It’s neatly cut and wrapped in clingfilm.

Harry frowns from his place on the bed. “How’d you guess?” 

“I saw her leaving yours as I arrived, dingus.” she tries to sound like she doesn’t care. She doesn’t.

“Oh.” he looks away from her.

“You two still talk much?”

“Sometimes.” he says dismissively.

“Oh.” she mimics.

She. Doesn’t. Care. 

Harry pulls his back off the headboard and sits up a little straighter. “Look, it’s not any different to you talking to Will.” There’s something defensive in his tone, but she doesn’t remember attacking him.

Allie’s brow pulls together. “So Kelly  _ is  _ your best friend?”

“No, well— I don’t know. I care about her, you know? I guess I’m lucky enough that she still cares about me, despite everything. You care about Will, and vice versa. I mean, you should’ve  _ seen _ him by your bedside whilst you were sick.” he says the last sentence without hiding his bitterness.

Allie bites her lip. Maybe it is the same. She’d never dated Will, but she’d had feelings for him that had surpassed friendship. She didn’t even know why she was getting so jealous about this; Harry wasn’t hers, she had no right to be jealous of Kelly. Not when Kelly was  _ Kelly _ , understanding and caring and smart. 

She’s worrying at the sleeves of her jumper out of habit when she feels Harry’s hands settle on her waist, meeting her at the edge of the bed. The desperation in the kiss is something she’s become familiar with. He kisses her like he needs her to breath, and Allie wonders how she even stays alive when he’s not kissing her. 

“Stop,” she pushes him back, her hand flat on his chest. “That’s not why I came here.”

Harry’s face shifts, “okay?”

She takes a deep breath and says: “you’re going to start a detox.”

It has exactly the reaction she imagined. Harry starts to shut down again, the words half registering as he stares at her with panicked eyes. It takes days to break down his walls and seconds to put them back up. He’s suddenly so far away from her, physically and emotionally.

“No,” is all he says, shrinking back into the bed.

“ _ Yes _ ,” she pleads. Allie grabs the corners of his duvet and rips them away from him entirely. His body curls in on itself. He resembles a wounded animal and she cringes.

“You can’t make me,” he sounds like a child. Allie wants to tear her hair out, only to have him know how much it hurts her to see him reduce himself to this.

“Yes, I can. You have to, Harry. What’s the alternative? Keep getting fucked up until the drugs run out? Which they will, by the way. Or, take control  _ now _ , take your life back.”

“I don’t have a life here.” he mutters, rubbing his eyes with his palms.

“Stop being dramatic,” she bites back harshly. 

“What’s the fucking point, Allie? We’re never going to leave this hell, anyway. It’s all over. It’s over.”

Allie sits on the bed closer to him, cross legged and near enough that her knees knock against his. “There’s so much to try for,” she sighs, trying to tone down her frustration. “We have to have hope. I know it’s hard and tiring and everything in your body says  _ no _ , but if we stop trying, we die. And I don’t want to die. Surprisingly, I don’t want you to die, either.”

His mouth twists into a half smile. “Such kind words.”

Settling her hands tightly on top of his, Allie tilts her head towards him. “And true. I’ll stick by you, every step of the way, if you agree to do this.”

“And if I don’t?” he dares to ask, voice soft, forehead tipping down to meet hers. 

_ Then I have to watch you destroy yourself.  _

“You will,” she says against his mouth, swallowing him up and silently mumbling prayers into the kiss. Prayers that he’s not too far gone, that no one is, that she might be a reason for him to  _ try _ . Allie’s never been a religious person, but if recent events are anything to go by, there must be someone out there watching over them. She asks whoever it is to give Harry Bingham another chance.

Harry laughs, his lips on her cheek. “You can’t just kiss me and expect me to do what you want, Pressman. You think I’m a pushover?”

Allie pulls back to narrow her eyes at him, and finds something new in his face. 

“No,” she shrugs, “but you’re not dumb,  _ Bingham _ . This town needs you, even if you don’t think so. Cassandra was right to want to include you in our council, and that could still happen.”

She can tell he’s not convinced, but there has been a change. She  _ has _ got through to him. Harry’s eyes flicker down to her lips, and before she knows it he’s drawing her back in, and pulling her on top of him. Either leg straddles his waist as he sits with his back against the headboard, her arms slung around his neck. 

“I don’t like this feeling,” he says it so quietly, she almost misses it, as if he weren’t even speaking to her.

“What feeling?” Allie frowns as he plants kisses along her jawline.

“That I’d do anything for you.”

Her heart feels like it’s in her throat. 

“So you’ll do it? You’ll detox?” she asks, unsure what else to say, and holding his face between her hands.

Harry turns one of her palms over and places a kiss in the centre of it. He’s not too far gone. He can’t be.

 “I’ll try.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you've all been so nice about this fic it has really helped me keep it going !!!! tysm to u all :))  
> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologise for this chap cause i know a lot of you were happy about harry wanting to get better but he still does!!! addiction is just very complex. i promise things will get better:) but for now... ~angst~  
> hope the harry POV switch up is okay too!!

Harry tries to memories the way Allie looks at this moment. Her hair is mussed against the pillow, her cheek squished, eyes closed. She breathes steadily, softly. She’s probably the most beautiful person he thinks he’s ever seen in his life. Allie doesn’t have to try — and she often doesn’t, she has other things on her mind, like their survival — to be beautiful. One of his shirts is hanging off her frame, too big for her, and slipping off her shoulder as she sleeps on her side. He reaches out a hand gingerly and pushes some of her blonde curls out of her face. 

Then, he tries to picture how she looked at him when she asked him to try, as he slips out of his bed and into the en suite. A small orange bottle is waiting for him. She’d looked so hurt, and  _ he’d  _ done that to her. He’d made her feel and look that way. It tore him apart. The memory isn’t enough for him to not reach around the back of the toilet and pull out the pill bottle the Guard had failed to find.

It’s not that he isn’t going to try for her, he is. Just… after this. He needs another hit. Then he’ll be fine, then he can really try, for Allie. His nerves are always on edge, and this just helps take the edge off. Everything is too fucking much for him sometimes. It all amounts to one huge pile of fuckery; college, his father, Kelly, New Ham, his mother,  _ Allie _ . There’s too much going on in his head.

The bottle only has four pills left in it, both from Campbell. Harry pops them all in his mouth quietly and drinks some water from the tap to wash them down.

When he goes back into his bedroom, Allie is stood by the bed. The shirt only reaches to the top of her thighs, leaving her legs bare. The shape of her breasts is visible through the fabric. She smiles at him sleepily, and he can tell that she has no idea what she does to him. How badly he wants her. How badly he loves her.

_ If you loved her, you wouldn’t lie to her,  _ his darker thoughts chastise.

Allie’s brow furrows, “is everything okay?”

Harry’s tries desperately to shift back into the nonchalant, cool Harry he tries to be. “Just needed to pee,” he shrugs.

She doesn’t entirely buy it. He’s about to ask if she trusts him, but then thinks, why should she? He just popped some pills in the toilet just a few feet away from her, after promising to try to stop. He wouldn’t trust himself either.

Instead, he wraps her up in his arms, and brings his mouth down to hers. She kisses him back eagerly, her fingers raking across his waist as she urges him closer. Allie smells of his shampoo and his aftershave and his laundry detergent and his heart flips at the thought of her being entirely  _ his. _ She kisses along his jaw, tugging playfully at his earlobe with her teeth.

She’s ready for another round, and Harry begins to feel even more awful. One of the effects of the Xanax is a lower sex drive. It’s not that he isn’t turned on — he definitely is — but he’s worried about the drugs kicking in at the wrong moment and he won’t be able to get it up. Allie’s lips on his skin is driving him crazy, but he gently places his hands on her shoulders and puts a distance between them. 

“I’m still really tired,” he smiles lazily, which isn’t exactly a lie. He is tired. 

Allie nods, “yeah, of course.” She takes his hand and pulls him back to the bed. They settle down together, Harry’s body curved around hers. His arm wraps tightly around Allie’s waist. He doesn’t want her to leave. He doesn’t want to push her away. But he’s scared he’s doing it all the same. Sleep has its grip on him until his phone  _ pings _ from his bedside, the bright screen illuminating the now dim room.

He rolls over, staring at the phone screen through bleary eyes. Harry’s chest feels like it’s about to cave in as he reads the contact name.

**_Campbell:_ ** _ we need to talk. _

 

—

 

The next morning, he tries to get Allie to leave without seeming suspicious. Truthfully, he doesn’t want her to leave. If they were to stay in his bed forever, laughing and touching and talking, he’d be happy. But if Allie’s at his when Campbell turns up, he doesn’t even want to think about what Allie would say or do. 

It feels an awful lot like going behind her back, and that doesn’t feel good. At all. He’s done enough of that, with the drugs, and going through that again could push her away. It’s all so fucked up. The timing couldn’t be worse. When’s the best time to start a detox? Harry’s not sure there is one.

There’s only five minutes between Allie leaving and Campbell showing up, and Harry desperately hopes they didn’t cross paths. Although, he suspects that if they had, Allie would storm back here to give Campbell a piece of her mind.

He wants Harry to run for mayor. Against Allie. It’s hilarious — ridiculous, really. Really, he’s been all talk about who should be in charge. He’s not halfway prepared to be in charge  _ himself _ . And he won’t go up against Allie, of  _ all _ people. 

That’s until Campbell blackmails him. And it is blackmail, emotional, cruel, manipulative blackmail. Harry’s hands ball into fists and he fights the urge to throw the coffee Campbell brought him back in the guys face. It feels like a catch-22. 

But there’s no chance he’d win anyway, right? And even if he says yes just so he can still get the drugs from Campbell, that doesn’t mean he has to actually  _ take  _ them, right? Because he’s getting clean. He really is. He can tell Allie all about Campbell’s plans, become an inside man for her, a mole of sorts. This isn’t a betrayal. 

Harry says  _ yes _ and Campbell hands him a new pouch of drugs in exchange. His hands shake with the weight of them sat in his palm, so light for something so toxic. He imagines they weigh a hundred tonnes. 

When Campbell’s gone, he heads back up to his room and hides the pouch behind the toilet. He hesitates a moment too long whilst doing so. One more hit, that’s all he needs. One more hit and then he’s  _ really _ done. For real.

He pops another couple of pills and sinks into his mattress, fading into oblivion.

 

—

 

She knows she’s been neglecting her friendship with Will these past few weeks, but she can still tell when something is off with him. Since the poisoning, things have shifted again between them. He’s been putting in more effort with her, which makes Allie feel guilty for not doing the same. Will’s been making the time to do  _ normal _ things with her in their free time, like play video games and watching films. It’s been nice. A sense of normality amongst so much unfamiliarity.

Allie wonders if her getting sick made him realise something, and that changed his behaviour. Harry had mentioned how he’d looked at her bedside and Allie could pick up on his jealous tone. What was there to be jealous of? Allie and Will were just friends — they’d been through this before, when she’d been crushing on him  _ hard _ and it was obvious that Will was completely oblivious. He’d had eyes for Kelly.

This had also been before Harry, though. The way she cared about Harry was monumentally different to how she cared about Will, and not in a lesser way, just in a  _ different  _ way. She wasn’t in love with Will; she loved him. 

She might’ve been in love with Harry. She was trying very hard not to think about that, despite knowing Harry’s feelings towards her. It was too big and scary and could change so much. Enough had already changed. What if loving Harry meant she lost Will? Was it selfish to worry that?

She leaves Harry’s in the early hours of the next morning. She’s hesitant to leave him after yesterday’s conversation, but she puts her hope in him making an effort to stop abusing drugs and promises to return later in the day. Once Gordie’s dug up some information on how to help someone through a detox, she’s going to set a plan into action. Until then, she’s worried about leaving him alone. But he’s not a child. He can take care of himself.

Allie’s mood has significantly increased. It stays that way right up until she goes to check the sign up sheet for elections, and her eyes hone in on the name _ Harry Bingham _ scrawled beneath the names of the Guard (which is just as confusing). Her chest tightens, her breathing shallows. She rubs her eyes as if she’s dreaming and the writing will just disappear. It doesn’t. None of this makes sense. 

Allie’s been frozen to the spot for too long when her cousin approaches her, his voice turning her blood cold.  _ Not him, not now. _

“Something the matter, Allie?” Campbell has his hands shoved his hands in his pockets as he smiles, cool, calm, collected. A master at manipulation.

She wheels on him viciously, “what’s your game, Campbell?”

Campbell just laughs. “Woah, not loving the hostility there, cousin. Shouldn’t you be campaigning for my vote?”

“I don’t want  _ anything _ from you.” she spits. Allie’s already pulling out the memory of Campbell giving Harry those pills at Halloween, piecing together a picture she really doesn’t like. “Whatever you’re playing at, it won’t work. And if I find out you’re messing with Harry—”

“Harry and I have a partnership,” Campbell dismisses. His tone is always on the opposite side of the spectrum to Allie’s, intentionally winding her up. He meets her anger with ice cold calmness, acting as if  _ he’s _ in control. He’s not. She’ll never let him have an ounce of control in this town if she can help it. “Not that it’s any of your business, anyway. Unless you and Harry are an item now.” He raises his brows at her.

Allie’s hands curl into fists. “Just leave him alone.”  _ Please _ .

Her cousin shrugs nonchalantly, “do you see my name on that sheet? No. It’s his, so I think you better talk to him.” he sneers condescendingly, before waltzing off like he isn’t trying to set Allie’s world aflame.

But he is, and he has. She’s burning up. The idea of Campbell pitting her against Harry in some game he’s setting into motion makes her feel nauseous. Allie and Harry have passed the point of no return, there’s no going back to being strangers, not when she cares about him so much. Too much. Everyone will be able to see there’s something going on between them if they debate one another. She’s surprised no one else has picked it up, except Campbell. Harry isn’t exactly discreet. Having her relationships aired in front of the whole town is the  _ last _ thing she needs.

First, she has to talk to the Guard. Then Helena. Then Harry. Her mind comes up blank as she tries to imagine what she’ll say to him, except  _ what is he offering you? _

But she already knows.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m at a camp rn so earliest i’ll update may be in a week or so !! apologies again  
> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is not edited because we die like men and i havent updated in like a month  
> anyway expect angst

She feels so much older than she was at the start of this all. Although, none of them really feel like kids anymore. They haven’t been normal teenagers in months, save for brief moments of pretend. As Allie waits for Harry in the coffee shop on Main Street, she suddenly feels the weight of the past months all at once. It ages her. It anchors her body to the ground in a way that makes her feel sluggish. A slave to time. They’re running out. Time is slipping away from them as they squabble amongst themselves, trapped in a world they know nothing about. The one thing that was keeping her afloat was her relationships, with Will, and Gordie, and Becca, and Harry. Now one of those has been thrown into flux.

None of it adds up. The Harry she knows wouldn’t —  _ couldn’t _ — run for mayor, not in his current state. The Harry she thought she knew wouldn’t go behind her back to do so. She’s trying desperately to keep her impulsive mind from ruining all their memories together. Every talk, every kiss, every touch, every moment. Was it all lies? Was he playing a game? The party at the church. When she found him fucked up and helped clean him up. The day he admitted that he loved her. When he came to hers on Halloween. When he visited her at the hospital.

It was real for Allie. 

She doesn’t know where to start with confronting him about it. Maybe Campbell was blackmailing him, but why couldn’t Harry tell her that? How could he say  _ I’m in love with you  _ with more ease than  _ I’m being blackmailed _ , especially after it’d been so hard for him to say the former in the first place.

Harry sat waiting for her, no drink in hand. He’s clean shaven but there’s nothing he can do to hide the now familiar bags under his eyes. She’d texted him asking to meet almost immediately after her  _ lovely  _ chat with her cousin, but he’d taken two hours to reply and she’d been so confused and angry and upset that she’d refused to go over to see him. One of their most recent conversations replays in her mind like a cruel film reel. 

_ I’d do anything for you. _

_ You’ll detox?  _

_ I’ll try. _

She pulls out a slip of paper from her pocket and sits down opposite him.

“These are the rules for the debate,” she tries to keep her voice steady, “the one you’ll have to attend. The one where you’ll debate me.”

He stares at her like she’s speaking another language, like he expected her to say something else. “Yeah, that’s fine, that’s… Allie, I—”

Something untamed and wild sparks inside her. Her anger flares up. “How long have you been planning this?” she demands, trying to maintain a guise of calm, but even she can hear the hurt in her own voice. The way tears prickle in her eyes.  _ Keep it together _ . She wasn’t going to let the first boy she let into her bed get the better of her. “Have you always been working with Campbell behind my back?”

Harry’s face crumbles, “what?”

“Sometimes I wonder if there’s another version of this world where we were friends before all of this,” she admits. “A world where we want the same things for each other, and for others. I wonder if that would’ve changed anything.”  _ I only want the best for you _ , she wants to scream,  _ I want you to get better and I want you to be happy and it’s killing me. _

He searches for the words to say but can’t find them.

“I still want what I mentioned for you, I still want to help you and I will. But if this has all been a rouse—”

“No, no, Allie, you don’t understand.” He mutters, searching her eyes and only finding the hurt she can’t mask.

“Why are you running, Harry?”

The double entendre of her words falters him.  _ What are you running away from Harry?  _ has a very similar answer to  _ why are you running for mayor Harry? _ anyway, she figures. Lies. Deceit. Addiction. 

“You have to let me explain. I’m doing this  _ for  _ you, Allie. Let’s go back to mine and talk.”

He hated Cassandra.

The thought hits her out of nowhere. It’s something she hasn’t thought about in months, mainly because Cassandra is dead and Allie is so far from the person her sister was. So what if Harry hated her? Allie wasn’t Cassandra; she never would be. But now paranoia asks her if it was something she should have heeded as a warning. Maybe she should’ve trusted her sister’s instincts more.

The side of her that wants to believe he’d never betray her wants to go back to his, though. She wants to hear him out. She wants to believe every word he says, and let him comfort and reassure her. Then, let him lay her down on his bed, mapping out every inch of her skin that he already knows so well. She wants to drown in him and forget all the other shit going on.

“No,” she decides, using all of her willpower. “We’re done talking for today. I need time to think. We’ll be in touch about… your problem.”

Allie stands from the table and Harry rushes to rise with her, but Shoe, who was standing watch outside, steps into view. Harry’s eyes wash over with hurt. It seems to be sinking in that he’s lost a fraction of her trust, until further notice.

She pushes the list of rules towards him again. “I’ll see you at the debate, Harry.”

Everything aches. There’s not a part of her mind or body that isn’t so fucking tired. 

Her day does not get better, or less complicated. She’s preparing for the debate when Elle turns up on her doorstep, and suddenly Allie’s house has become a sanctuary of refuge. She burns with a hatred for Campbell that surpasses anything she’s felt before. She can hardly stand the thought that he’s walking around their town, free to do as he pleases, when the terrifying consequences of his instability and insanity is sitting right in front of her. Allie would never turn Elle away. And now she has a plain and clear reason to despise her cousin, other than suspicion. 

She amazes herself at the debate, with how well she holds herself together. Allie feels like a broken shell tied together by a piece of string, but,  _ but _ , she holds on. She never looks Harry in the eye. Once she’s laid out her action plan and her wants for the town, she listens to Harry’s voice as if she's detached. Nothing he says sounds like Harry. It feels like someone else’s words fed through Harry’s body, and she already has a sneaking suspicion as to whose. It’s not hard to imagine, when Harry’s been reading from prompt cards all session and Campbell has been watching on with a smug smile and hungry eyes.

The quick fire debate between her and Harry raises some brows. It’s charged, and heated, and even though Allie tries to stay calm she just  _ can’t.  _ Harry holds back, but only so much that his witty rebuttals and quick remarks don’t land too hard. Meanwhile, Allie is no hands barred. It’s unfair to him, really, but Harry takes everything she throws his way on the chin, with practised ease.

Helena opens the debate up to questions, and Allie shifts uncomfortably in her seat. She’s been wildly aware of Harry staring at her this whole time. Hopefully no one else has noticed, but it’s pretty blatantly obvious. If she’s lucky, people will mistake it for hate. It would be an easy enough mistake. Why wouldn’t Harry hate the sister of the classmate he also hated? They’d only shown their affection and care for one another behind closed doors.

Harry stands, addressing the crowd in his once fine suit, which is now a little creased, a little mussed. He’s well groomed, his hair gelled so that the messy fly aways she used to find cute have been tamed. “Thanks everyone for coming,” he says, “and thanks to Allie, for stepping up after her sister died, to do a very, very difficult job.”

He sounds hollow. She wonders if she’s the only one noticing these things. Possibly, considering there’s only one other person in the room who might know Harry even better than she does.

“Five months ago, she was the only one who could’ve done it.” He looks to her, and there’s appraisal in his eyes. Any flicker of warmth that this might make her feel is snuffed out when he looks away and says, “but that’s not true anymore.”

“A lot of things now are very different from when we first got here. Maybe. in the beginning we needed to give up everything that we had. All of our freedom, our possessions, our identities, all for the greater good. Maybe, we needed to turn over every decision in our lives to become ants in the colony that we are right now. But now, this place works. And I say it’s time to give back what’s rightfully yours.”

Someone on the front row cheers, and it’s a catalyst for a resounding round of applause. Allie steadies her breathing.

These are words that before everything happened, Allie would have expected from Harry. She would have expected the rich, entitled and arrogant prick in the grade above to go on about capitalist ideologies with such trigger phrases as  _ greater good _ and  _ what’s rightfully yours. _ But that wasn’t Harry. Not really. That was the version of Harry Bingham that the real one used as a defense mechanism to hide all the shit he was keeping pent up inside.

“Control over your property, control over your destiny, control over your own lives. And if you do, I—”

“Time,” Helena calls, and Allie can’t thank her enough. Her head was starting to spin.

“Really?” Harry falters, looking between Helena and the cards in his hands. He spares a glance at Allie who can only meet his eyes with a stony, guarded expression. “Well, vote for me.” He says, with little enthusiasm, but the crowd in the church cheers again anyway, unable to see anything but the Harry he’s presenting himself as.

“Thank you, Harry.” Helena nods, with all the fairness and grace Allie expected her to have. “Allie?”

She rises from the chair and shocks herself by how stable she manages to stand. She doesn’t need prompt cards to say what she needs to say; she’s said it a hundred times before, in a hundred ways. They need to stick together. They need to work together. They need to have hope.

“Thanks everyone, thanks Harry.” her eyes only flit to his momentarily. “I’m proud of us. For getting here, to this moment. And I know it hasn’t always been easy, but take a look around you, we survived. Because all of us agreed to put this place first. And ourselves second. We were raised in privilege. And we’ve had to forget everything we learned about what life owed us. And instead, think about what we owe each other. The next six months are going to be tough. We have to feed ourselves. We have to face winter. What Harry’s offering might sound appealing, but now is not the time for selfishness. For asking, “what is mine?” What is mine is yours, and what is yours is all of ours, and that’s how we’re gonna get through this. Together. And how, some day, we’re going to find our way back home.”

The applause is a sweet, reassuring sound. She hasn’t lost total confidence. There’s something about her ideas, her plan, that appeals to people still. Will and Gordie smile at her from the front row, and she feels the tiniest bit lighter. 

“Thank you,” Helena interrupts the cheering, “I’m going to now put the first question randomly from—”

And that’s when it all goes to shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!  
> if you notice any major mistakes from my lack of editing just lemme know<3  
> also i've changed the chapter number to ? because there's gonna be more than 11 chapters but probably less than 15 but i just am not sure rn


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi im back <3

The political chaos that a group of unsupervised teenagers can make is beyond anything Allie could have previously imagined. She’d read Lord of the Flies, but this was something else entirely. In between Lexie’s bid for power and Campbell’s plotting, she’s trying to protect Elle and sorting through the complex emotions she has for the mind-fuck that is Harry Bingham. It’s overwhelming. It’s exhausting. Allie wants to sleep for a thousand years and avoid everyone and everything.

But when she’s alone at night, in her bed with the lights off, it’s Harry who she imagines beside her.

Lexie is insufferable, and she can’t get through to her. Will wants to postpone the election. She’s not sure she trusts the Guard anymore. She doesn’t drop by Harry’s house, not even when he stops turning up to campaign events (but Campbell is always there in his place). Allie manages to goad Gordie into checking on him, though, because she isn’t going to let his addiction drown him. Even if she feels betrayed. 

And then, out of nowhere, things look a little brighter. They make a breakthrough with their reasoning for being there. Becca has a beautiful baby.

Then she gets arrested. It feels like a joke. And as she’s chained to the radiator in her own home, she can’t help but lament on everyone she’s let down. Will, who’s chained beside her. Elle, who’s back in the hands of her abuser. The town, for not being a better leader. Harry, for not seeing his problems sooner. It’s not her job to fix everyone, but if that’s true then why does she feel like she’s failed at everything?

“They won’t get away with it. Harry. Campbell. They won’t believe them.”

His name in Will’s mouth is like a stab to the gut. She stares at her shoes. The ties around her wrists have made her hands go numb. She thinks she’s going to die.

The night they get arrested, whilst Will’s fast asleep, someone creeps into the study in the darkness. Allie stares at the form that’s familiar, even in the shadows, and stays completely silent. She wishes he could see her properly right now; that he could see her raw red wrists and tired eyes. 

“Allie,” Harry hisses, crouching just beside her. He reaches out a hand to brush her hair from her face and she flinches. She hopes he’s hurt by that.

“Why are you here?” she deadpans quietly.

“I can’t believe they’ve done this to you,” he says in response.

“How? You orchestrated it.”

He guffaws, “you can’t really think that, Allie.”

“Looks like it to me,” she shrugs.

Harry’s fingers slide around her wrists, and she hears a key enter the lock to her handcuffs. The moment the metal falls away from her skin she feels like she can breathe again. Allie looks to Will, but Harry’s hand finds her forearm.

“No, just you,” he whispers.

She pulls herself from his grip, “no way.”

There’s a silence as Allie belatedly realises what’s going on. This isn’t a breakout. God, she’d been naive to even think for a minute that it would’ve been.

“Oh.”

“Allie, I wish I could get you out of here, but everything’s so delicate right now. I’m- I’m gonna fix everything. I am. I just need time.”

“When was the last time you used, Harry?” she demands suddenly, and a little unfairly.

Harry’s mouth snaps shut.

“So Campbell’s stash is holding up then, I assume. I hoped you’d be above bribery -- stupid of me.”

“Fuck,” Harry sighs, scrubbing his face with his palm. “Fuck, shit. I- I can’t. Allie-”

He’s broken. The resolve has been leached out of him.

Against her better judgement, she places her hands on either side of his face and pulls his gaze to her. “Recovery is a constant journey. Just because you take steps back, it doesn’t mean you’ve gone completely off the path.”

Harry scoffs gently, “cheesy, much?”

They’re close now, closer than they’ve been in days. Everything hits her like an avalanche.

Her lips are pulled to his like the gravitational pull of the moon. She can’t help herself. She’s still mad at him, undoubtedly, but she’s missed the feeling of his lips against hers more than she misses coffee or cartoon reruns or home cooked meals. In all of this, Allie’s found a new home in Harry, and she both hates and loves it. 

“I’m going to end this,” he says quietly between kisses, “all of it.”

She isn’t sure that he can. Allie pulls away, because Will is still asleep right beside her, and Harry’s hands stay clutching her waist. 

“I am,” he asserts again.

“Okay,” she nods, hoping she conveys enough belief in him, even though she’s thoroughly run out of hope.

Out of his pocket, Harry pulls out a cereal bar and slips it into her hands. Allie wastes no time ripping it open and shoving it in her mouth. It’s a hundred times better than the shit they’ve been feeding them as prisoners in their own home. But she only eats half -- the rest she puts in her pocket for Will. Harry watches her silently, crouched in front of her. He looks a little better than when she last saw him; clean shaven, tidy hair, clean clothes. The dark bags under his eyes remain visible, even in the dim room. It makes her heart clench.

“Tomorrow, things will change,” he says, more to himself than her.

“I hate it,” she blurts suddenly, the thoughts in her head becoming louder and louder.

Harry frowns, “what?”

She squeezes her hands together tightly and rubs her sore wrists until it makes her flinch. The pain is a good distraction. “This. I hate that I can’t hate you. I hate that I don’t hate you. I feel the exact opposite way about you.”

“Allie--” 

She holds the cuffs out to him, cutting him off. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose, right? And Harry, talk to Gordie. Please.”

Harry is lost for words. Gingerly, he takes them from her and clasps her wrists with the metal slowly. “Yeah,” he mutters, getting to his knees. 

He turns away from her with a pained look on his face, as if it’s all too much. It is. Allie doesn’t sleep that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow my writing twitter [cvbeswaters](https://twitter.com/cvbeswaters) or come shout at me on tumblr at [virginiakings](https://virginiakings.tumblr.com)  
> feedback and kudos are always appreciated !!


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